Something frustrating happened to me a week or two ago.
I was at the vet for my dog.
The vet assistant (I’m not sure if that’s the proper term) asks if I want to put my dog on these two pills, one to protect against heartworm and another to protect against fleas.
I asked what heartworm is, what fleas are, and what the pros and cons are. (It became clear later in the conversation that she was expecting a yes or no answer from me and perhaps had never been asked before about pros and cons, because she seemed surprised when I asked for them.)
Iirc, she said something about there not really being any cons (I’m suspicious). For heartworm the dogs can die of it so the pros are strong. For fleas, it’s just an annoyance to deal with, not really dangerous.
I asked how likely it is for my dog to be exposed to fleas given that we’re in a city and not eg. a forest.
The assistant responded with something along the lines of “Ok, so we’ll just do the heartworm pill then.”
I clarified something along the lines of “No, that wasn’t a rhetorical question. I was actually interested in hearing about the likelihood. I have no clue what it is; I didn’t mean to imply that it is low.”
I wish that we had a culture of words being used more literally.
Something frustrating happened to me a week or two ago.
I was at the vet for my dog.
The vet assistant (I’m not sure if that’s the proper term) asks if I want to put my dog on these two pills, one to protect against heartworm and another to protect against fleas.
I asked what heartworm is, what fleas are, and what the pros and cons are. (It became clear later in the conversation that she was expecting a yes or no answer from me and perhaps had never been asked before about pros and cons, because she seemed surprised when I asked for them.)
Iirc, she said something about there not really being any cons (I’m suspicious). For heartworm the dogs can die of it so the pros are strong. For fleas, it’s just an annoyance to deal with, not really dangerous.
I asked how likely it is for my dog to be exposed to fleas given that we’re in a city and not eg. a forest.
The assistant responded with something along the lines of “Ok, so we’ll just do the heartworm pill then.”
I clarified something along the lines of “No, that wasn’t a rhetorical question. I was actually interested in hearing about the likelihood. I have no clue what it is; I didn’t mean to imply that it is low.”
I wish that we had a culture of words being used more literally.