Here’s the sitch:
My wife and I and our four-month-old puppy were at my sister’s house out in the country this weekend (we’re going to be moving there in a month, so we’re getting it ready).
Puppy’s been really good all weekend, so we decide to start training her to not wander off when we let her off the leash. She does really well with us on the back deck, so we have her walk back to the barn/garage with us.
We’re al hanging out in the barn. My wife and I are getting tools, puppy’s sniffing around. Then she get very agitated, starts running back and forth and trying to vomit. We think maybe she’s been bitten by a spider. She vomits up breakfast, won’t let us look into her mouth, and repeatedly tries to crawl into a corner and hide. She’s whimpering and repeatedly swallowing.
This is 60 miles from our current home, so, not knowing what to do, we go through the yellow pages for an animal hospital. We find one that’s 15 miles away, and open on Sunday at noon, and we rush the dog to the vet. It will be $100 for a consult, they say. OK.
We get there, vet’s kind of a jolly smartass. Not a bad sort. Deflates my wife’s hysterical panic over our whimpering dog with some jokes, etc. Clearly overworked (we’re the 3rd emergency of the morning, he’s the only one there). Dog won’t let him examine her mouth, so he sedates her and tells us he’ll need to keep her for a bit to examine her. (This will likely cost more than $100, we presume, but that’s OK.) Call at 2PM, he says, and don’t worry–the dog will live, this is a young, active, responsive dog coming in under her own power w/o major breathing difficulty, not some 12-year-old hound who’s gone into anaphylactic shock and needs to be carried in.
We go back to the house, pace a lot. Call at 2 PM, answering service (his wife) pages him, no reply. Call back at 3PM, she pages him again, says he’s prob. just busy in surgery, etc., just wait. Around 4PM, he calls us back, says she had swallowed some wood splinters or small plant seed pod burrs, etc., and he removed four or five of them that were stuck in the rear of her throat. Throat is very raw, still, and, just in case it was a plant burr and the dog has some allergic reaction to it, he wants to keep her overnight for observation and keep her on a fast IV to help flush any toxins out of her system. We should call at 11 AM the next morning. (Definitely going to cost more than $100, we think.)
OK. We go home last night (nearly a 1.5 hour drive from the vet’s office). This morning, at 11 AM, my wife calls the vet. He says he wants to disinfect the rear of her throat one more time before he lets her go. Call back at 5PM. My wife complains that she’ll have to drive more than an hour to get there. He says, call at 4PM, and I’ll probably tell you to come get her at 5PM.
Wife unhappy, but I tell her to be patient, he’s probably overworked, he said he was going to be in surgery most of the day, etc. She reluctantly agrees, then calls our home vet on an unrelated matter (had to schedule an appt. for one of our ferrets). As she’s talking with them, she lets them know what’s going on with our dog. The vet’s assistant (nurse? tech? don’t know what her title is) says, that sounds really strange–we don’t even keep dogs in overnight for a spay/neuter. It sounds like that vet might be trying to keep her there longer than necessary, to fleece more money out of you. My wife calls me back, and we agree that she should return and get our dog released.
My wife’s already gone up there–vet left a sign on the door that he’ll be out 'til 4PM; answering service was very rude to her, she reports. She’ll be going back at 4PM.
My question (after this huge setup): Whaddaya think?
Is the vet prolonging her stay so as to get more money out of us?
Is he being overly cautious? (This seems unlikely, since he went out of his way to tell us that this was a minor issue, the dog would be fine, etc.)
Or is he just overworked, and used to a slower country pace (something my sister attests is usual out in that neck of the woods–not much hurrying going on), and doesn’t think it’s unusual to wait the whole day to get around to doing a followup check on a minor ailment (when, presumably, patients with more life-threatening situations may also be in the queue)?