Mineral deposit in the shoulder???? - Page 3

...and like Hexe, I never met a vet, yet, who did not either: provide a 'device', of whichever design from Hexe's list, as an automatic part of the deal when sending home a post operative pooch; or on the basis Rik describes of being a vet for 'x' years who has also become regarded as a friend, at the very least discussing with me whether I had a bucket collar or other options at home already. And over all these years I have dealt with multiple vets. And had a lot of post-op animals to take care of. Quite what was going on here that the dog's stitches split, unless Rik is going to 'fess up to being one of the people Hexe describes, is beyond guessing.

I do not see anywhere in Rick's post that Rick was sent home with Elizabethan collar nor that he removed it. Vets make an even trivial mistake like that now and then and that is why I am proposing for clients not to be lemmings and educate themselves as much as possible. Also just to send the dog home with a collar is simply not enough. If the vet sends the dog home with the collar then he needs to impress upon them strenuously and explain to them the purpose for the collar and how long the collar should be on the dog ( until the would heels) and what may happen if the collar is taken off too soon.If he does not do that then he or she is squarely at fault. I doubt that if that would be done that the dog owner with IQ number above a number of their shoe size would not follow the instruction.

Also, Hexe you are contradicting yourself. You say that you doubt that this thread will educate people about Elizabethian collars since they are already familiar with them, yet you also say that many people are ignorant and remove their dog's collar which is the cause of the dog injuring itself.
Here is your quote: "...but I know of far too many owners who take the collar off the dog when they get home, either because they feel bad for the dog, the collar is too clumsy and knocks stuff over, or the dog can't fit into its crate with the collar on."
You can not have it both ways. Either they are "familiar with Elizabethan collar" and then they do not remove them prematurely and do not need education about it, or they remove them prematureally because they do not know any better and that is why IMO they need to be educated more about it and this thread is doing just that.
But you can not have it both ways.
By the way, you are assuming too much by saying that people know about such collars and do not need to be educated. And you know what "assume" means. Such attitude of the vet is exactly the attitude which may kill the dog.
As far as I am concerned professionals including vets, dog trainers and so on,... often think that what is trivially obvious to them is also obvious to their clients, and that is often not so. IMO Just to be on the safe side, professional's tasks are to treat each client as if he would be totally ignorant of what they are recommending for their dog or procedure they are doing to their dog.


 

No Prager, what happens is the owners are told exactly why the Eliz. collar (or other method) should be kept in place, but they 'know better' than their (expensively and extensively educated) Vet - partly fueled by insistence from internet gurus regularly pouring scorn on the vet profession, no doubt - and decide to ignore all the advice, because their little 'fur baby' is 'so uncomfortable' / 'dislikes' it so much. Seen this happen so many times I can't tell you.
Exactly the same with some owners told after joint surgery or repaired bones: don't let the dog run or jump; but who take it straight out and let it off the lead to race around virtually as soon as they get home, because its too difficult to go out with the dog and constrain the sort of movement it's allowed to undertake while it goes through long weeks of healing. And then wonder why surgery has to be repeated.

When my eldest GSD had an emergency spay 1.5 years ago due to contracting pyometra, the vet did not even mention an Elizabethan collar or any other prevention device. Fortunately I was able to be with my dog 24/7 until her recovery was complete. I consider the vet who performed the surgery to be knowledgeable and experienced (in addition to having practiced veterinary medicine for 30+ years she is the third generation of her family to become a veterinarian) and she did an excellent job on the surgery; I am going to assume that she simply forgot to mention/include the collar when I picked Willow up after the procedure. Vets are fallible (just like the rest of us) and make mistakes, unfortunately animals sometimes pay with their lives for those mistakes.

@Northern Maiden. I am so glad that your dog is well. As I see from your post, you did not put Elizabethan collar on your dog. That just supports my original point that dog people should be educated exactly for the reason that vets if not negligent or stupid make mistakes as any other human being .

@Hundmutter while I am sure that there are some people ignoring their vets and their doctors, I find your point of view and general attitude to blame all the dog owners first disturbing. Such an attitude of "us against them" is exactly the reason why vets need to be screened thoroughly.

But it is no more of an overgeneralisation to imply that it is always going to be the vet's omission, is

it ? And to 'screen vets thoroughly' you have to know far more than the vast majority of owners are ever going to pick up through their internet researches.

Northern Maiden shows that of course this sort of failure to provide / mention methods CAN happen; of course it can. I suspect that it most often happens in precisely those cases  where the client is so well known to the vet that they are 'expected' to be able to fill in the blanks for themselves, based on long experience. That does not excuse it; but given the number of times vets have gone out of their way to tell me things they already know that I know, I doubt the number of times it happens is all that statistically significant.

As to the other possibilities: it occurs to me that should [e.g. Rik's] dog have been one of those cases where the skin was too damaged or thinned to trust that sutures would hold, the dog had no business being sent home - it should have stayed hospitalised at the vets until they were sure healing had started and that risk was past.  However, there are owners who 'know better' than their vets, or who do not want to pay extra for overnight stays. Possibly because they have been busy collecting the views of all & sundry from the Web. Even long term use of and friendship with a vet should not mean that sort of risk gets taken, and if that indeed happens the vet is of course at fault for allowing it.  But OTOH we should cut vets a little slack for perhaps taking such risks more often with those owners who have been with the practice for many years (and therefore presumably have found it satisfactory until now), and who are (at last appear to be) such experienced and knowledgeable keepers that their judgement ought to be able to be trusted.

@Hundmutter. I have never " imply that it is always going to be the vet's omission" which causes problems. All I am saying that the dog owner should be educated in these matters because IMO the dog owner is ultimately responsible for the dog's welfare thus he needs to make proper choices and not be lemming nor complacent. This education must include my vet's opinion which I personally value greatly. How difficult that is, is irrelevant. Life is not forgiving just because we have a good excuse. In real life, if we make mistakes and wrong choices, then it is our fault when world hits us upside the head. But this concept may be too old fashioned - I guess. To say that it is better not to get the second opinion from vets on the internet strikes me as paranoia.

And "cutting vets slack"?

Shure. I cut the vet slack. Always. Why? Because I educate myself about the vets' abilities and the condition my dog has to the point as many vets told me, I may know more about the dog's condition then they do because I read all scientific literature on it which is available to me. I listen to vet carefully and ask questions which based on my knowledge, the vet's experience and knowledge make sense for me. And because the buck stops here, if anything goes wrong then I am responsible and I know that I had done the best I could by choosing specific vet and understand his or her points and options and I have done so from an educated position. I will never allow my vet or doctor making those decisions for me and I will not respect vet who insists on me doing so. My education and vet's advice, are all just "tools" for me which I need to understand and then I use to make the one decision I am comfortable with and I know is moral, ethical and in lastly in my budget.

Personally, I am amazed that I need to defend education here,... on the other hand, I guess, I should not be.

Oh, please.

No one said anything about owners not educating themselves about their animals, nor did anyone discourage the OP's friend from getting a second opinion--though you're not going to get a "...second opinion from vets on the internet..." because a practitioner isn't going to place their license in jeopardy by make a diagnosis without examining the animal. The best you'll get from an actual vet on the internet is the same thing you'll get from a bunch of folks here: thoughts on what the problem *could* be, best and worst case scenarios. From the laypeople, you'll also get personal experiences with similar issues with one's own dog or a dog known to that person, and warnings against taking the dog to the vet because it's just a waste of money.

You've managed to take a simple inquiry from someone and turn it into three pages of patting yourself on the back because YOU encourage education for owners, as if you're the only one who does so. My work is done here. Have a lovely remainder of the week, Prager.

Probably the greatest number of posts you read on the internet are like many of the posts on PDB - people in the main who are really expert in anything, and are currently practising their skills, are too darn busy to be always on a keyboard, anyway ! So how many vets' opinions you could read will be limited by that, as well as a (quite correct) reluctance to more than generalise and hypothesise when they can't have eyes and hands on the patient.

"The Mercola Healthy Pets/Dr. Karen Becker newsletters contain a lot of good information. I question why someone would call it "nutjob"."

Because it doesn't, actually, have good information. It isn't science based in the slightest. Mercola was never a physician. He was a psychologist - which apparently gave him plenty of insight into how to manipulate the masses into believing his quackery, and you are falling for it. He's been ordered by the courts to stop making illegal claims, but I guess he's free to keep making claims that are just plain stupid rather than illegal.

I can't wait until someone invokes "Jean Dodds" next.

But hey, just switch your dog to raw diet, never trust a word a veterinarian says, remember that diagnostics are pointless, and just put your dog's life in the hands of the writers of random web sites and nothing can possibly go wrong.

In all seriousness do whatever you want. Just don't come crying when you didn't listen to the vet and something bad happened.