Quite a lot. Laboratory tests in dogs allow us to get information from things or organs, perhaps internally, that we can't otherwise determine from an outward exam. And that's the best way to look at it. Because I can put my hands on a dog, I can look at things, and I can check their color and listen to their heart and do all those kinds of things. But I can't tell you what their liver function is. I can't tell you what their kidney function is. I can't tell you what their blood sugar is. So that's where laboratory tests come in and give us answers that we may not otherwise be able to see from the outside.

All of these are so variable, but it's okay. So orthopedic injuries, obviously I'm looking at fractures, dislocations, any change in the structure of the bone, if there's a tumor there, those kinds of things is what I'm looking for, for that. Where it gets a little hairier, you start getting into ultrasound, maybe MRI. A lot of times you're looking at soft tissue structures for that. So maybe you're looking for a tumor that's growing off as a soft tissue organ. Maybe you're looking for something with the integrity or lack thereof inside of an organ, like in the lungs or the spleen or the liver or things like that. So again, if people saw the last segment I talked about, you have to know what normal looks like before you can recognize abnormal. That's where it's difficult to answer this question with being very specific, because it just depends on what condition or disease process we're looking further into. I'm sorry, that's a real fake answer.

The x-rays themselves don't help your dog, but they can help your dog by potentially providing a diagnosis so that we know what the best treatment modality is to fix or heal your dog.

Usually very effective. Nowadays with the advancements and all these equipment, x-ray machines, it's very rare to come across a non-digital x-ray machine. And the real reason I say digital, digital itself is not better, a clear image is a clear image, but digital allows you to darken or lighten an image or focused on a certain area to increase contrast. And it allows you to do so much once the image is taken. Whereas with the old hand tank, x-rays you had one shot, like a negative one, it's not like negative, it is a negative one, like old photography film. You either get it or you don't get it. And if you don't get it, then you got to do it again and again and again. So yeah, a lot of the imaging now has come so far. Ultrasound is very commonplace in practice where when I started practicing 20 years ago, very, very few people that I can think of at all had ultrasound. It was only something that was available in referral centers and things like that. So, imaging has come a long way, that has definitely aided the diagnosis of some of the tougher conditions out there. And if you can diagnose things more accurately, then you can treat things more quickly and more effectively. And it has the potential [inaudible] much better for every patient healthier because of that.

Again, because we're talking about four or five, potentially different modalities of imaging, it's hard to answer that question with one answer. I guess the biggest thing with some of those imaging studies would require an animal to be very still. Not all animals are very still, especially when they're ill or painful or things like that. So sometimes mild or sometimes not so mild sedation might be necessary first. Then the animal can be handled safely or stay in a position, usually a somewhat vulnerable position like being on your back, kind of stretched out for x-rays or ultrasounds, things like that for an extended period of time, that requires sedation. That's probably what comes to my mind at the forefront when I hear that question, yeah.