Share your veterinary nightmares---or why I hate vets! - Page 2

 I know some Vets that I wouldn't carry a dead rat to. I personally think very highly of my Vets, I have dealt with them for 15 years. They have saved my dogs lives when I know no one else could have.  I have gone to the expense of trying to prove them wrong by getting second opinions, only to prove them right. A quality Vet you can totally trust with your dogs is PRICELESS!

I think any one who has been involved with dogs for any length has some horror stories. I have lost dogs to bloat. and an entire litter to the hands of the Emergency Vets. 

I don't hate vets. But I have found there is a wide variance in quality. Even something as dumb as getting a useless , pet, American GSD's ears up. I could only find one vet in two counties who said we could get them up. The rest said it was too late at 8 months. We did it and it took 2 months. One missed a serious heart murmur when I first brought her home. So when in doubt, I go to the source. Since PennVet in Philly is 20 minutes away, that is where I go. So far, no dissappointments.

D'man

 I don't hate vets per se. What I do hate are thieves, liars, incompetence and cheats.

I once had a bitch come down sick after whelping. High fever but no other signs of pyo at all.  I wanted the pups to stay with mom to nurse. $180.00/day for pups.  For bitch, $5,000.00 /week not including extras like meds.

Ultrasound ($500.00) was negative, I had requested they do one but it took them 3 days to do it. All the while they were trying to instill fear in me.

I insisted to read her chart. They were changing antibiotics every 12 hours. Never once gave them a chance to work. They were not adding antibiotics but they were switching them. It does not take an expert to know how to administer antibiotics.

 I said I wanted to see her, they brought her out to an exam room for me to visit. Big red flag.

The next day I went up again and insisted to see her in her quarters after they told me she was dying and the fever would not abate. They had her room sealed off from any real ventilation, she was laying on a quilt and the air flow was blocked from the gate. I told them to give her ice bags and remove the quilts. 

They did everything wrong that they could. Incompetence at it's finest. Then they told me I MUST spay her NOW or she WILL die. Fortunately  I was smart enough not to sign the blanket consent form when you sign in  the dog stating they can do surgery as well as the other treatments. . I crossed that off and wrote in "no surgery without my written consent".

They had two doctors sit me down away from the other clients and put pressure on me to spay her after a week or so of this.  They used fear as a motivator. I asked how much to spay her, answer $2,800.00. I asked why? answer- because it's an emergency. I asked how much if they did it tomorrow, answer same price, reason why-still an emergency.

I basically told them to shove it and to stop discontinuing antibiotics and give them time to work and if they didn't I would not pay the bill at all.. (i may have gotten their attention)

Fortunately my normal vet has a tech who "picked up some shifts " over at the ER vet. She reported to me the truth of what was happening. 

signed (to copy Bob-O--)

the Ranting gsdlvr2

grrrrrrrrrr

wow gsdlvr!

That's an outrageous story OMG

 yup, Rezkat and that is the Readers Digest version. 

Arrgh, f....kers   Pardon my French

gsdlvr2, I assume that your bitch made a full recovery and was not spayed.

I've come to believe that the middle name of some vets is "spay" whenever a bitch has reproductive issues.

No, I don't hate vets per se either. However, I can't stomach greed and incompetence by the veterinary "gods",

I had two really bad vet experiences - both involved teeth

First one was a vet who refused to pull a retained puppy canine.  He kept reassuring me that it would come out.  It did come out after the adult canine was halfway in but pushed the canine out of alignment.  I wound up with a much higher bill at another vet (a vet dentist) who had to put braces on the teeth to correct the problem (the lower canine was growing into the roof of the mouth)  She agreed the tooth should have been pulled.

Second one was a cracked and abcessed tooth.  First thing I said when I saw the swelling on the side of the face was - looks like an abcsess.  Now this was a new vet (we ditched the one who would not pull the retained baby tooth) He said --- no the teeth look real good and we went through about 2 months of antibiotics, biopsies, etc etc etc.  - The abscess even broke through the skin on his face!!!  

That stupid abcess cost me a lot of money and my dog a lot of unnecessary pain - dog hurt so much that when my other dog poked him in the mouth he bit her.  Right through the toungue.  That was a $700 trip to the vet ER because it lacerated a large vein in her toungue and blood was pouring from her moutn.  The stupid vet who had not diagnosed the abscess said I should have kept  a solution of saturated Epsom salts and that would have stopped the bleeding.  He said the dog would not have bled out and I overreacted**  My SUV was a bloodbath by the time I got to the dog ER with her though and she was groggy for 4 days afterwards.   Anyways I took the dog with the bad tooth to another vet because the first vet was also just treating his perianal fistulas with antibiotics and would not talk about other treatments.  I said to the new vet could you also look at this tooth?  He pulled it on the spot.  Also did perianal fistuala surgery 3 years ago.  That dog is still with me, no recurrence of either problem  [I had gone to this new guy because he was highly recommended for fistulas].  I never went back to the vet who could not treat a simple abscessed tooth!

**the people at the vet ER took one look at her and said - can we take her back and start working on her NOW before you do the paperwork?  I used to work at a vet school and I know a bloodbath when I see one.  I know that a little blood looks like a lot more than it is.

 Not only did she have a full recovery but she never had any repro problems either like they insisted she would after that. They said if I didn't spay her I could never breed her again successfully. 

Turns out I don't believe it was a repro problem in origin. I don't know what it was, she was new in the country and in heat when she arrived. When she whelped it was evident she was ill. but not evident before that, stress perhaps.  She didn't do anything normal. She never looked, or licked back there at all , she didn't even lift her head she layed there with her head flat like she didn't even have the strength to get through the whole procedure of whelping.I don't know what was wrong but it was not pyo and she has been fine since. I delivered and cared for all the whelps because she couldn't and we only lost two or three I think that were stillborn.

Wow! I cannot honestly say anything bad about our vets. Just a pet peeve that every time we saw a particular vet he insisted on going thru Bandit's coat with a flea comb, after I told him she didn't have fleas. Every single time we were in for annual shots or whatever, there it was. There was one time he may have justifiably felt the need to do this and that was when my cats were found to have fleas. I had Bandit on brewer's yeast with garlic tablets, which I had heard helped prevent fleas, and indeed it did work........no fleas! Same vet, one time Bandit needed stitches removed and she curiously turned her head to see what he was doing........and he jumped! My gentle floppy-eared lab/shepherd/husky was just wondering what he was doing and he was scared of her.I thought that was kind of strange. Other than that, we always see the same vet now, who is a very compassionate, caring, understanding person. At my request it was she who helped put Bandit to sleep when she was too starved and sick from cancer for me to make her keep going. She almost cried and today still says Bandit was the best dog ever. Hope I didn't ruin the thread :)

My first GSD was diagnosed with ankylosing spondlylitis in her spine at the age of 8. The vet who did the diagnosis said she had both arthritis and a chronic infection in her spine, as the x-ray showed both destruction of bone due to infection, and new bony growths due to arthritis. The arthritis was impairing the circulation, so not enough blood could get to the area to clean out this opportunistic infection.

The vet recommended euthanasia. When I said I wanted to give her a chance, at least, to see if we could help her, he wanted to put her on prednisone. He also tried to sell me some really expensive dog food.

Okay, let's think about this. We have a dog with a chronic infection, and we want to knock out its immune system with prednisone? WTF???

I took my business elsewhere, and found a wonderful kind, caring veterinarian.  He put her on an antibiotic that would not depress her immune system, and I began giving her supplements to boost her immunity: odourless garlic capsules, vitamins, echinacea and chondrioitin/glucosamine sulfate.

When I brought her back a month later, for the recheck, the nerve function in her hind legs was much improved. With his support, I kept her going for another year and a half. Throughout the whole ordeal, she never gave any sign she was in pain, although she had to be. At one point, I had decided to put her down, had made the appointment, and was ready to leave in about an hour.

We'll take one last walk together,  I thought.

The minute she saw the leash and collar, she struggled gamely to her feet, her tail wagging.  I called the vet, and cancelled the appointment. It wasn't yet time.

Eventually the day came when she could no longer walk, but just dragged her rear end along the ground, until her nails were bloody from scraping on the cement and gravel. I knew then that it was time.

RIP, my dear, brave Lili Marlene.