While I think the idea is uncivilized – basically, it would be causing the animal suffering to be separated, and thus represents profiting from animal suffering – I agree that the actual wording of the bill would shed some light on what happened. If it’s as described, it shouldn’t be difficult to get everyone (including the local news media) on your friend’s side.
When I needed to put down my childhood dog, the emergency vet was the only place open.
I held her as they gave her an injection and went to sleep. They charged me 38 bucks as I recall - it’s been 29 years- and I wrapped her up and took her home. No extras.
Recently we had to take my son’s parakeet in for a check; he wasn’t acting right.
Turns out he had cancer and needed to be put down. Maybe it’s because I had my small children with me, or maybe it’s because we were all crying - me-sad for their loss, and them at me crying, but they didn’t charge me anything, **and **made my son a little footprint casting with the bird’s name spelled out in rhinestones and one of his feathers stuck in.
It cost them a couple of bucks and several minutes of effort from a couple of the girls there, but I thought it was really sweet.
We also got a sympathy card from the vet a week later.
We all know that vets are a business, but I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Unattended euthanasia may be discounted. I took a friend’s dog to their vet for euthanasia. When they did the paperwork, I told them I did not want to be present. They took off some of the fees since an exam room would not be used, etc.
When I took my doofus boxer to the emergency vet hospital after the recent Yellowjacket Encounter, they took him into a treatment room somewhere in the back and had me wait in a small exam room. When he came back, they’d done all the treatment and had us wait there for a few minutes while they monitored him.
If he’d needed any further care, I’m sure they would’ve done it in the other room, where they obviously had all the equipment, meds, etc. The room I was in was nothing more than a table, bench, and sink–no instruments or anything.
Perhaps they had a similar setup that wasn’t easily accessible to the pet’s owner being in the professionally equipped room, or to do the euthanasia in the unequipped room.
It still sucks, though. 
As I have said, we are in separate states and I have no way to view the bill. Ny friend’s daughter does not live with her so SHE doesn’t have easy access to the bill. I am just going on what I was told in a very brief phone call yesterday.
This. Also, no matter how good a stick you get, some of the really really decrepit ones Just. Won’t. Die. Their circulation is so shitty it takes ages for the euthanasia solution to make its way from the leg to the heart/brain. It’s kind of a horrifying experience, even when you’ve seen it a hundred times–sometimes we give them an extra dose straight into the heart just to get it over with. Most pet owners have not seen it a hundred times, and you absolutely cannot do a cardiac stick in front of them.
So if the owner wants to be present, a lot of places put in a catheter, hook up a bag of fluids to flush everything in smoothly and help it circulate, and give a dose of anesthetic induction agent prior to the euthanasia so there’s no paddling/whimpering/agonal breathing like you sometimes get as the euthanasia solution takes hold. The anesthesia doesn’t make any real difference to the pet, as these motions/noises are involuntary and they’re too far gone to notice them, but it makes things far less potentially traumatic for the owner.
And since all this extra material and time is for your benefit rather than ours or the critters…guess who gets to pay for it?
I have never not stayed with one of our dogs when he/she needed to be put to sleep. If there was an extra charge for being in the room and comforting the dog, no one was stupid enough to itemize it on the bill.
That is a wonderful veterinarian, and a sad but lovely story.
I live in a small town (nine square miles), and our veterinarian will come to your home to euthanize. She charges $50 for the service. I think it would be a bargain at any price.
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My vet, in New York City, does this too. Actually he makes house calls for any needed service, by appointment. The house call charge is around $70 I think, and he comes with a vet tech and any medications or equipment he thinks he will need. It’s very old-timey.
I had my Smokey cat euthanized at home – well worth the extra money. Aside from the house call charge, there was no additional charge for my presence. The vet didn’t run a catheter. He sedated the cat with Ace then used the pink stuff to finish the job.
I’ve seen horses “go down hard” when euthanized. It’s scary, and very upsetting to the owner. I can understand why small animal vets would want to do a little something extra to make sure that doesn’t happen. I can also understand charging for it. I can also understand the owner not really understanding what is going on medically, or being told and not absorbing it in the moment, and feeling they are “being charged extra” for being present.
I’m in Calgary and had the same experience, though I think it was a bit more expensive for the at home (around $125 I think). Worth every penny.
That seems outrageous to me. I was pretty amazed at the cost of veterinary treatment for my dog who passed away last year (I think alot of the problem is vet insurance industry which as increased prices just as they have in the human medical industry). But that seems to cross the line IMO (I was kind of upset they just assumed I pay for her remains to be cremated).
I’d agree this is something that it would be worth contacting the media about, no idea how you’d go about it though.
Thats good reason to explain that it could be a distressing process, its NOT a good reason to gouge an extra $50.
Ummm they feel like they are being charged extra because they are, you know, being charged extra. No quotation marks required.
The scenario of an owner distressed by an animal involuntarily thrashing in it’s last few breaths is avoided by taking a few simple, but additional steps, such as running a catheter.
They are being charged extra in order to receive extra services. Not for being physically present.
There is no “extra service” required. Being present when your pet is put down is a pretty basic requirement. The idea of NOT being present is quite unimaginable.
What you mean it might be a little distressing ? Wow! You don’t say? That’s totally a good reason to throw in an extra fifty bucks charge :rolleyes:
I strongly agree with the OP that they should contact the media about it somehow (sound like just the kind of thing the consumer rights section of a local newspaper would be all over) . I’ve just no idea how.
I really don’t think you are understanding me.
Scenario A: cat is euthanized, with owner present. No additional precautions are taken, just the shot. Cat thrashes before expiring completely. Owner is upset that cat was “in pain” and badmouths Vet all over town because the euthanasia was “botched.”
Scenario B: cat is euthanized with additional preparations so that the cat literally “goes to sleep” peacefully. Owner is happy.
Scenario B costs money because additional services are provided.
Of course both A & B are emotionally distressing to the owner for the simple fact of losing a companion. Scenario A is FAR more upsetting. After enough morons go on about the awfulness of Vet’s euthanasia practice, and perhaps sue them for emotional distress, Scenario A will no longer be allowed at Vet’s practice.
If thats actually the case they should be talking to a lawyer rather than the media. They are being falsely charged for services. To charge someone for one thing and when they think they are paying for something else is clear breach of contract.
Regardless of that, what you are ACTUALLY saying is that vets are charging their client for unnecessary medical procedures on their dying pets just to avoid some hypothetical complaints about the nature of euthanasia.
When I rushed my cat to an emergency vet because he was peeing blood, they examined him in a small exam room while I was present, but they took him into a back room to treat him. I wandered around the clinic and found I was able to peer through a tiny window into that room. He got catheterized (urinary), which he absolutely DID NOT enjoy. It was somewhat distressing to watch him get treated. I can see how another owner would cause a big fuss about how her baby was being treated, but I was calmer about it.
After treatment, he was his usual sunny self.
Charging for extra procedures in place in order to make the owner feel better about being there seems like kind of a sticky wicket for the vet. If you add a surcharge for being there or give a discount for people who choose not to, it’s really going to look to a consumer like you aren’t putting the animal down humanely* unless the owner is there and that they have to pay extra and stick around in order to get their animal put down properly. There’s no way for the vet to win that one, so it seems like they’d be better served from a PR standpoint by just building the cost into all of their euthanizations and not itemizing it.
- Yes, I know this isn’t actually true, but it sure as hell looks like that to someone who’s never euthanized an animal.
I think this kind of thinking is one of the reasons why EVERYTHING at the vet nowadays is ridiculously expensive.
At one point during the treatment of my dog my Serbian brother-in-law (who is a pathologist) pointed you could have her flown to Serbia and had one of the procedures (kidney ultrasound) done at his family’s human medical clinic, for that same price as my vet was charging.
I can see the extra charge if they have to use a more complicated technique (as a couple of other folks have mentioned)… I mean, if the owner isn’t in the room, they can be more, um, efficient / less gentle; while I know they wouldn’t deliberately be cruel to the pet, they have had enough practice that they can sort of “bull through” a pain reaction on the part of the pet, and get the job done more efficiently.
I seem to recall that when I had a guinea pig euthanized a couple years back, I was asked to tell them whether I’d be in the room - I think they would have set things up differently. I declined. They may possibly have had an extra charge, I honestly don’t recall.
That said, it’s an unkind thing to do to charge extra, especially in an emergency vet situation where they’re probably already charging a premium, and with an established client who’s probably already forked over a fair bit of cash in the past.
We had a cat put to sleep, back in the late 80s. One of the vets came to our house and did it, right in our living room. She tried to administer it intravenously, the cat howled in pain, we howled and started crying… so she administered a stiff dose of something abdominally (no vein required). Slower, but aside from brief discomfort from the needle, much less stressful for poor Pete. He went to sleep right there on the couch.
No charge whatsoever. And now my allergies are acting up, dammit.