You may have already heard of this, but I just ran across PetMD.com. I’d love to get the opinion of others on this site. The interface and graphics are nice, but unfortunately the look and feel greatly exceed the functionality. For example, there were only four vets in my zip code and the neighboring zip code didn’t even exist. I looked up diarrhea (as my Jack Russell does indeed have diarrhea) and all I got was a laundry list of diseases that my dog could have – ranging the gambit of stomach flu to conditions I’ve never even heard of. I guess if you’re going to mimic a dynamic service like WebMD.com, you might want to beef up your resources first.

A new service was also launched recently called Webvet.com. Again, the site is slick and contains a lot of information. I had a hard time navigating the many, many links, so I punted and searched for diarrhea. I received a lot of results, but in that same “laundry list of conditions” fashion, it was hard to narrow down what’s wrong with my dog. Webvet.com seemed to have more information than PetMD.com and with a little tweaking to their symptom checker – it could be a great resource.

With that said, all pet owners need to remember – if your pet is sick or hurt, take him/her to your vet. Tools like this are certainly helpful, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.