F....Animal Vets

[firstdown]

The best thing for dog owners is having a nice healthy dog and just when they start to have health problems they get flattened by a car.

[mredskins]

Originally Posted by firstdown

The best thing for dog owners is having a nice healthy dog and just when they start to have health problems they get flattened by a car.

I guess this would be a true statement if I looked at owning my dogs as a finiancal investment.

[mooby]

Originally Posted by firstdown

The best thing for dog owners is having a nice healthy dog and just when they start to have health problems they get flattened by a car.

Maybe you were trying to be funny or maybe you weren't, but all the same I don't find that cool. My sister's friend had a dog once who lived absolutely fine (It was a little weiner dog, I forget what their true name is) who got out of the yard once and she disappeared for a couple days and they discovered she got ran over near a school about a mile away from where she lived. That's the worst kind of pet death there is imo, one day you have a fine, healthy, normal pet and the next they get out and boom they're gone.

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by mooby

Maybe you were trying to be funny or maybe you weren't, but all the same I don't find that cool. My sister's friend had a dog once who lived absolutely fine (It was a little weiner dog, I forget what their true name is) who got out of the yard once and she disappeared for a couple days and they discovered she got ran over near a school about a mile away from where she lived. That's the worst kind of pet death there is imo, one day you have a fine, healthy, normal pet and the next they get out and boom they're gone.

I was joking.

[mredskins]

I think to be a Vet you most likely love animals. If you know everything to help save the animal you are going to tell the person. In the end it is our duty to say yes or no to the treatment.

Sadly it is like owning a car. If a mechanic tells you how to fix it you have the choice of doing that or having a broken car. Problem with animals emotions is a big variable in this decision.

[mredskins]

firstdown I knew you were j/k don't feel bad.

It reminded me of watching a horror flim. People can watch other people getting slaughter all day in the movie but as soon as a animal or pet is killed the "gasps" come out.

I guess it is because animals are so innocent in our eyes.

[BDBohnzie]

I know the pain of Vet visits. We inherited my wife's bichon frise because her stepdad was moving and said you either take it, or she goes to a rescue. The dog has a soft spot in my heart because it's my wife last connection to her Mother, who passed 4 years ago.

Overall the dog is in great health (she's 13), but the dog goes to more specialists than I do. She has skin and eye problems, so she's sees a dermatologist and an ophthalmologist. Eye drops for her right eye, and steroids for her skin problems. But I guess it could be worse.

But these specialists do not nickel and dime us to death like the regular Vet does. Drives me nuts the amount of stuff they want you to do.

[Sheriff Gonna Getcha]

One way to avoid vet costs is to get a mut; purebreds tend to have an awful lot of problems. In-breeding does that sort of thing.

[mredskins]

I am back at the Vet with my other dog this go around. She is a boarder collie and is 8 years old, she has high levels of something in her blood so they have performed $1100 in test on her so far and still can't figure it out, though we are still waiting on the final test. Sounds like it is her liver which could spell doom.

This go around we have trimmed back stuff and only done it at our vet no ER vet crap. Plus we have a new Vet since the last go around. The new one is genuinely nice and realizes budget comes into play and gives us options, where as the last one was like every thing must be done at the highest price!

[firstdown]

The reason they charge so much is because they know they can get away with charging that much. Back in the day people would not spend a fortune on their pets and would have put them down and on the way home stop and pick up a new one. They hit my buddy up for 8 grand and the dog still died.

[Schneed10]

Pets aren't for everybody. But for those of us who have them, it's easy to justify paying a couple hundred bucks here and there for ailments or whatever.

The beef I have is that some vets are almost predatory in nature. They'll push diagnostic tests to identify conditions that can't even be practically addressed.

I recently changed vets because my old one pushed hard for that kind of thing. I like the new vet a lot better. It helps when you go in there to be real strong with the doctor up front and tell him that you want the decision tree laid out up front.

- Sir, your dog has a heart murmur and I want to do an echocardiogram.

- Why do the echo, what could be the result of the test?

- Either it's fine and we can put her under for dental work, or it's not fine and we can't do the dental work and send her for heart surgery.

- How much would the surgery cost?

- Oh I don't know, $3000.

- Well I'm not paying for a $3000 surgery, so how about you don't do the echo test and we don't do the dental work. I'll just brush her teeth myself.

Do your damndest to keep emotion out of the equation. It's hard, but approaching it like that works for me, it keeps the doctor in line and lets him know you have limits and not to push you.

[Schneed10]

By the way, the dog I mentioned in the second post in this thread died back in May. I'm glad we never did anything about her heart, because it would have been tortuous pain for her, and it maybe would have only bought her a couple more months. She ended up dying in May suddenly, collapsed right on the spot, probably from a heart attack.

She went quickly and painlessly. There was no last few months of struggling to recover from surgery. I sleep very soundly at night knowing we did the right thing for both our wallets and the well-being of the dog. Sometimes saying no to the vet is in your dog's best interests anyway.

[mredskins]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

By the way, the dog I mentioned in the second post in this thread died back in May. I'm glad we never did anything about her heart, because it would have been tortuous pain for her, and it maybe would have only bought her a couple more months. She ended up dying in May suddenly, collapsed right on the spot, probably from a heart attack.

She went quickly and painlessly. There was no last few months of struggling to recover from surgery. I sleep very soundly at night knowing we did the right thing for both our wallets and the well-being of the dog. Sometimes saying no to the vet is in your dog's best interests anyway.

Sorry to hear your lost but I beleive you did the right thing as well.

You brought up a good point as well even if you can save them is it really in their best interest or you just putting it off to spare yourself the pain of their lost?


Here is what gets me I just paid $375 for an ultra sound of my dog's liver yet tomorrow we are going to have a 3D ultra sound of my wife's stomach to determine the sex of our next baby, $125. How can you justify the dog's ultra sound not 3D more then a human one? This is where Vets are unreal.

[firstdown]

When my buddy dumped over 8 grand on their dog that still died the only thing I could say to him was "dumb Ass". He knew I was right and he only did so to make his wife happy. At one time he had some balls I guess he lost them when I introduced him into his now wife. I kind of miss my old friend.