Pet Pals: Animal Doctor

I bought this game at Target, in desperation: I needed a Mac game to entertain my 7 year old while on vacation, with no time to do any research or to wait for an order. I looked at it skeptically; my daughter begged. I hoped the award seal on the box was a good sign.

I quite like it. We played it together for many hours, following the guidance to help a variety of animals: dogs, cats, a turtle, a fish, an iguana, a rabbit, and even a tarantula. It's a good learning experience, and it engaged my daughter in thoughtful problem solving rather than leaving her frustrated and grumpy. Even though I'm fairly experienced with animal care, I found it interesting to play as well. There's a fair amount of reading to do, using real veterinary words, so it's a little over her head on her own. I had to read some of the case notes to her, but I enjoyed it and I expect with just a little more time, she'll be more familiar with the vocabulary and confident enough to read it herself. She needs more reading practice, and she's highly interested in following along.

The game does a good job of being matter-of-fact and professional, asking you to select the three most pertinent, professional questions to ask, handling injections, rectal temperatures, and stool samples with a minimum of fuss. It will present the cases with info on the normal pulse and temperature for that species, then ask the doctor if a particular reading is high, low, or normal. The cases seem well chosen to help educate about the care of the various species and to help compare and contrast appropriate care for different animals. We had a rabbit with a hairball, and we learned that rabbits cannot vomit, that hairballs are life-threatening, and that rabbits are poor surgical candidates. We removed an abcess from an iguana in minor surgery, which was just the right amount of 'icky' to help get the feel of the real thing.

We played the game a mac running Mac OS X 10.5.2, without any system glitches. We did encounter some program bugs when shaving a surgical candidate - on one dog we were told to "shave the abdomen" and no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't get it to actually shave the abdomen. We went ahead and scrubbed and injected anyway. We lost some points, but we were able to continue. So far we've put about 6 hours of game play time and there's still a lot to explore.

The program takes about 15 minutes to install, but once installed, you don't need to insert the CDs to play - something I really appreciate rather than expecting a child to handle the CDs (or having to take them on trips).

I've been looking for good games in this age range, and I've been disappointed more often than not. This one is a winner.

My daughter loves animals so this was a perfect game for her. It is very realistic except for the grooming which I am sure would be difficult to simulate. She enjoys trying to analyze what is wrong with the pet and treating it.

I love this game, it's fun and educational! Well, actually the name of this game used to be "Petz Vet" but I guessed it just changed! Anyway, you can do so much cool stuff and all the stories are fun!

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