When I was in junior high, there was a family living down the street that had hound dogs. We were walking by one day and the boy, about two years younger than I was, was standing there with a rifle. We asked him what was going on and he said his dad told him he had to put down one of the dogs that was sick.
We were horrified that this man would make his barely 11 year old son shoot a pet in the head.
My conversations with the receptionist at the Vet’s often go like this:
Me: My dog is (fill in the blank). Do you think I should bring her in?
Her: We can’t really tell you anything over the phone. If you think something is wrong you should bring her in.
Me: OK. (Brings her in.)
I don’t know why I go through the ritual of calling every time. I just do. The one exception is one time when my dog was very sore from over-exercising and I called the vet’s to find out what a proper dose of baby aspirin would be to help temporarily relieve her pain. I went the rounds with the girl on the phone that time. She must have told me a jillion times that the aspirin could hurt my dog’s stomach lining blah blah blah. I explained that I just wanted to give her something to help her through the evening, that she had a normal appetite, that I wasn’t planning on giving her aspirin as a habit. Eventually she told me the dose that would be proper if the vet were to recommend it, which he hasn’t. OK, I get it. Thanks.
I’d pay your bail. There was an article in the paper yesterday about a letter carrier whose hand was mauled by a pit bull running loose. When I was a carrier I just barely escaped being bitten by a loose dog. It got my pants leg. After a healthy application of doggie mace it backed off - and its owner came running up saying that the dog would never hurt anything. I managed to avoid macing him. (Dearly departed putz smiley goes here.)
What’s worse, is that many of the idiot pet owners have decided that vets do indeed cost too much, and figure they can get free pet health care by calling the guy making minimum wage at the pet store. Having once been this guy, I had almost daily versions of the following conversation:
Clueless animal owner: My (dog/cat/velociraptor) is sick (describes symptoms ranging from kennel cough to Ebola virus), what should I do?
Me: Take it to a vet.
CAO: Isn’t there anything you can tell me to do?
Me: I’m not a vet, so I really don’t know what is wrong with your animal, and it really wouldn’t be a good idea to recommend treatment over the phone, I could end up making it far worse.
CAO: I could bring it in…
Me: That really isn’t going to help, I not a vet.
CAO: But you work with animals…
Me: I feed them, clean their cages, and sell them, if one gets sick, I call the vet we have on retainer (not a very good vet, but that’s another story).
Some would also tell me that they were calling the pet store because the vet insisted they bring the animal in to his office,and they were hoping that I could diagnose over the phone since the vet couldn't.But Travis had to shoot Old Yeller! Pa was on the cattle drive! 
Sweetums, the inclusion of “velociraptor” made me LOL. 
I joke about the $1K rat (who passed away about a year ago), but there was never any chance I was going to have her put down if she wasn’t suffering and could recover. Which she could and did. When I commit to an animal, I commit for its life.
Which is why I don’t have any pets right now. Can’t afford them. 
This would be funny–vet can’t diagnose over the phone so you call the less well-paid, less well-educated, less experienced pet store employee hoping he’s got better phone diagnosing abilities, were it not for the pets who are not getting treatment because it isn’t convenient for the owners.
Not that one can’t be a loving, mostly responsible pet-owner and also someone who works 40 hours a week and have other responsibilities which would make your life simpler if you could get someone to diagnose over the phone, but . . .
Then there’s my friend who has a $300 rat–said rat being valued at the cost of medical services to the HUMANS caused by rat-ownership.
Well, OK, rat-ownership plus a dose of human stupidity. Kid who owned rat gave rat a bath, but almost drowned the rat, rat got scared, and bit Mother of kid. Mother of kid needed $300 of medical services–but was more inclined to blame kid than rat.
Well, I commit to my pets for life too, but that doesn’t mean I’d spend a grand on a rat. I’d probably spend a grand on one of my dogs, but that would really depend on quality of life issues, the likelihood of further expensive and protracted treatment, the likelihood of success of same, and my financial situation. I’m not criticizing your decision to go the extra mile for your pet rat, but where would you draw the line? $3000 MRI? $5000 rat chemo? Assuming you would draw the line someplace, I think you have to respect that other people, with less money or different commitments, might draw it someplace else, and before you did.
I’m not really comfortable with the idea that having a pet means a limitless financial commitment to medical care. I think that mindset elevates pets to an entitlement of only the wealthy, because the rest of us can’t afford them.
So IMO there has to be some middle ground. I’m not criticizing SisterCoyote’s decision when I say that $1000 for sick rat would not have been something I would have been able to justify to myself (or my family). I don’t think that makes me unworthy of owning a pet, either.
No longer on the topic of the thread, but…
…I could have told them bathing the rat was a mistake. It takes three full-grown adults to bathe a rat, plus a fourth to play goalkeeper to keep the little beastie in the sink.
If she’d been closer to three instead of barely two, I probably would have asked the vet to put her down. I also don’t have kids and am only responsible for myself financially - otherwise, I agree with you.
(Also, it wasn’t a grand in a shot, which I couldn’t have paid.)
Things like this make me glad that I only work in the surgical/dental appointment area. These clients are pretty much already in it for the long haul, re-checks, follow-ups, physical therapy, all that jazz. I don’t what I’d do if they asked me to field emergency calls; I get angry just hearing what the emergency line workers tell me they’ve heard.
I agree with this entire post. Well said Jodi.
Do you expect a plumber to charge the same thing for a planned, office hour visit as for a middle of the night visit? Your emergency is either interrupting someone elses fully scheduled day, or it’s pulling them from their non-work activities, into the office to see you.
I have a friend that was an exotic pet vet, at a clinic that did 24/7 emergency care. That means that one week out of 3, she had to be within a few minutes of the clinic, at all times. For any non-business hour call, the on-duty vet was given the option of applying emergency call fees, and keeping it as their payment for having to make a special trip to the clinic. That seems totally fair to me. If your vet has to drive to the clinic at 3AM, they should be able to charge an emergency fee for it. It was up to the on-call vet to decide how much that fee might be.
For my friend, if it was truly an emergency (dog got hit by a car), she usually didn’t charge anything extra. If it was a convenience emergency (my rabbit hasn’t eaten in a week, but I wasn’t willing to use my personal time to bring it in, so I’m calling Sunday evening) then my friend could and would apply what she called a “stupidity” fee.
This is also I think, supposed to get people to make appointments for routine things, and not wait and let them get out of hand before they bring it in. If I think my dog is coming down with something, I’ll make an appointment for later in the week and pay less. If its the same either way, and I (hypothetical owner, not me) feel an appointment inconveniences me, I’ll wait until we’re at STage V emergency and bring it and wonder why the condition can’t be treated at this point.
Was this example in the middle of the night? Is this a life or death plumbing emergency? Are you serious? Or just an idiot? As I said, my vet accepts emergency appoints without question, and without demanding extra money. **vetbridge **has no problem interrupting someone else’s fully scheduled day, (the ones who wait while he attends to the emergency); he just wants compensation for it. No mention of how he compensates the ones who have to wait.
Apples and oranges. In the example given, is vetbridge referring to an after hours emergency? Have you even read the significant posts? What the fuck does driving to the clinic at 3AM have to do with anything? We’re talking about a dog whose life is threatened, during regular business hours, that he will only see if the client pays extra.
Again, this has fuck-all to do with the situation in question. Go back, and read it slower this time.
I’m not sure what you are saying. Is “My dog just ate a tube sock” some kind of chronic problem? Look, the client was an ass. No question. But **vetbridge **is an ass for refusing emergency treatment, IMO.
As I said, maybe most vets operate this way. I’ve never seen it, and I would never return to a vet who did so.
My friend has a cat who is suffering from a mysterious ailment. She (the cat) has been in the hospital for a week now. We talk every day for an update to her condition. She called me *yesterday *(Sunday) to tell me that she had just received a call from the vet. The vet had gone to the clinic to check on the cat. I guarantee this will not be billed.
No, I didn’t say that, and you don’t seem to have read my post very well. I clearly stated that is was to avoid people making “routine” things an emergency. I don’t understand why you are being so angry. And for the cost of the surgery required to remove a tube sock, maybe with follow-up care (I’m not a vet, I don’t know), I’d wager that the emergency fee is a drop in the bucket.
And he didn’t deny any treatment, he was just upfront about the cost of it. She was the one who turned down the option.
I’m sure there will be a hospitalization charge that covers it. He/She damn well better be checking on inpatients over the weekend, or that would be a shitty vet.
Hmm. Maybe. I know that *someone *checks the animals every day. I doubt that it is the vet. She is a one woman practice. Hard to believe that she spends every Saturday and Sunday checking up on patients. This cat seems to be out of the woods at this point, so it isn’t even a critical case.
I’ll see the bill when it comes in. If there is an extra charge for an office visit on Sunday, over and above the daily hospitalization fee, I’ll let you know. I seriously doubt there will be. But, so what if there is? She still is not refusing treatment unless a surcharge is paid. She would only be charging for services rendered.