While in grad school at Auburn, I had the great fortune to be friends with a number of veterinary medicine students who I’ve kept up with over the years.

Most of us talk on a regular basis — even keeping up a group text message to talk about random things going on in our lives or to share photos.

Because of some of their overnight shifts, I’ve gotten used to questions about cat surgical procedures or obscure dog bowel diseases popping up on my phone at 2 a.m.

Last week, a conversation about problematic pet owners was set off when one of my friends complained that a client brought in their dog for being itchy.

While this seems like a fairly common issue for dogs, the follow-up is where it completely derails as she wrote, “They think it’s because there are ghosts in their apartment.”

Clearly, the most logical answer to the problem.

This started a deluge from the other vets in the group.

There was the client who thought a serial killer had tortured her cat by tearing its ACL.

A schizophrenic cat lady who thought her precious pet was possessed by a demon and the government was using the microchip inside the cat to listen to her thoughts was quickly asked to sign the cat over to the vet office so they could find it another, less insane home.

One patient asked for help over the phone in getting their dog motivated. When questioned further, apparently the dog had been lying around the backyard for days and hadn’t moved from the same spot — nor was it breathing.

In my job, I get to interact with the public a good bit, but even I get nowhere near the level of crazy that my Vet Gals do.

So, in the spirit of having some of you dear readers not end up as crazy stories your vets tell to their friends, let me give you some helpful words of advice:

• Garlic does not “ward off fleas,” despite whatever natural animal medicine blog you read it on. It’s actually toxic to pets and can kill them.

• “Watering your lawn correctly” is also not a form of flea prevention.

• Heartworms cannot be prevented by you “having a fenced-in yard and living in a nice neighborhood.” Heartworms are also not stopped by “living in a gated community.”

• A tablespoon of Guinness beer per week is not a heartworm cure. (I was saddened to find this out as well; apparently, I’m still at risk for heartworms despite by best efforts to self-medicate — though I did exceed the supposed recommended dosage by a few tablespoons.)

• Rubbing a whole orange on your pet will not cure fleas.

• Dyeing your pet rabbit purple to “ward off the evil spirits” will not benefit the rabbit at all – and it definitely doesn’t cure scabies.

• Essential oils (lavender, lemon, rose) do not cure fleas either. Stop believing everything you read on the Internet.

• Diatomaceous earth (better known as “white dirt” to us non-science speaking folks) also doesn’t work as a cure for fleas.

And finally:

• Don’t ask your vet if there’s a place where you can take your dog to “become a man” before the neutering procedure. There is no such thing as a dog brothel, nor should there ever be.

Cliff McCollum is managing editor of Gulf Coast Media. He can be reached at cliff@gulfcoastmedia.com.