To not pay the whole vet's bill

@Ahurricaneofjacarandas Absolutely!

And not to be ripped off by the vet is always a bonus!

It makes my blood boil when people expect people to train tirelessly for years to develop skills and knowledge that only a tiny proportion of the public have purely out of the goodness of their heart... I'm sure vets DO care deeply on the whole and do their best. However they can't work for free. That's just not how life works. Pets are a lifestyle and financial choice. They're not a right. When it comes to keeping them healthy and happy the buck stops with you, the owner, nobody else. If you don't want that responsibility then don't get a pet, nobody is making you. It's not even like you can accidentally aquire a pet. You've 100% made the decision to take responsibility for that animal yourself.

Hope your dog is better.Bless him they need walks at about 0500hrs in this weather,plenty of shade,fresh clean water etc.🐕🐶🐾🐾

Anyway!I'm sure you know that😀.

Consultation fee is just that.Any further investigations will always be extra.
You should pay up as you didn't ask the cost,didn't say no plus you need the results.

Hope you get it sorted.
Your dog is worth it.🌈

You sound like a wonderful vet

I guess I wasn't sobbing my heart out in theatre yesterday euthanasing a 13 year old dog who I had known since his 1st vaccine as his cancer was too advanced for surgery to help and I know he is the best friend of a little boy with autism.

"as a cat lover the kitten one makes me wince particularly. A fracture ffs. Get it in the right position and a kitten will heal in no time."

Well there are fractures and fractures. The old adage of "cat fracture? put the two ends of the bone in the same room and it'll heal" ain't necessarily so, and isn't always humane either.
Not very displaced sacroiliac luxation in a cat that is moving pretty well? NSAIDs and cage rest, great. Displaced, unstable, painful sacroiliac with the poor article hobbling a couple of painful steps crouched low and then collapsing on its side vocalising? Um, no. Put a screw across it or euth it. Displaced, overriding, unstable, painful humeral or femoral fracture? Fix it, amputate it or euth it. Not fair to leave it. Can't cast it. In fact you'd be hard pushed to cast much in a cat (I've seen a distal radius casted in a cat, you might get lucky but this one wasn't, a couple of months and cast changes later the non union was still flopping all over the place, we sighed and amputated it).

When I was a single mum I had four cats and even though we were not well off by anyone's standards I could afford treatment food, annual vaccinations and vets fees for all of them. Most of them lived to 19/20 without incident, just the odd tooth removal.
Now I'm on a good salary, my son has grown up and I own my own home but I cannot afford to have more than two cats because the cost of pet ownership is risen to almost unaffordable levels.
I HAVE to have them both insured because vet's costs are so massive and I always have a reserve of £1000 in savings to pay for items that are not covered.
I simply would not own a cat or dog without insurance now - I have friends without insurance who have spent £10,000 on saving their pets lives because they don't have insurance pretty much their whole life's savings.
Also its important to be proactive and ask before treatment starts how much each section costs because they often will not tell you, you will just be presented with a large bill.
I also shop around if I have to for example if a cat needs teeth removing which is not covered by my insurance, one vet quoted £1,500 and another £300 for the same treatment.

"I’m not saying the vets are wrong but I’d be questioning that as ‘standard’ for straightforward surgeries that would be fairly short in duration. We don’t do it as standard for humans, including young kids if you want size comparisons 😝. It is necessary in some cases but not as a general rule, particularly for routine ops and where there is no indication investigations would be required for underlying conditions. Would be interesting to hear from any vets here on how animals may vary in this regard, wildly different physiological response to anaesthetics??"

Sometimes there is absolutely NO indication that there is anything wrong with an animal, and the owner opts for pre anaesthetic bloods and it shows underlying kidney and liver problems. This also happens in young apparently fit animals. So I suppose "you never know" is the answer.
It does happen.
There really isn't anything like a "routine" op. Complacency is a dangerous thing. I've had young fit animals in for routine ops die under induction of anaesthetic, and 15 year old dogs come through a dental with flying colours.
A GA is a GA regardless of how routine the op is. A hysterectomy is a routine op, but it is still huge abdominal surgery. We do it every day multiple times but people think "routine op" and it's easy to become a bit nonchalant about it.
Obviously longer anaesthetics like complicated dentals or orthopaedic repairs can take hours and the risk increases .

The bloods are an option. They are Gold Standard. If you can afford it, it's wise to have it done especially in higher risk groups.
The annoyance (on the vets side) comes from receiving abuse for simply offering the blood test. We never force anyone to have it; it's an option.
I'm not even going to respond to the comment above about vets having "no compassion or kindness...usually wrong about diagnosis". You have obviously never seen the staff in floods of tears about their patients, working for free, coming in outside of their paid shift to check on pets, taking animals home overnight, and much more. What a horrendous comment.
I'm glad I've left the profession. I miss the animals terribly,
Not so much the humans.

This. Anyone that buys these poor dogs is contributing to their appalling health problems. Adopt don't shop

@Trudij123 I could clearly see how much the whole staff cared, making a fuss of her and giving her big cheers when she came to show her walking after a few weeks, as well as being patient with my anxious phone calls on her surgery day! She's a lovely cat, really sweet natured. Not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, but hey, we can't all be a rocket scientist. My other cat is a feline genius and slightly evil with it.

Vets make my blood boil. Their charges are astronomical and I've yet to meet one with any compassion or kindness. And they are usually wrong in my experience about diagnosis.

But you always ask what extra costs are involved with tests etc. Pay the bill and learn the lesson

Oh that’s great - I’m so glad Zara is recovered so well 😀😀

It can be soul destroying. There’s only so much discount a vet can give ( we’d discount treatments regularly and still get shit on by the customer) and to see otherwise fit and happy pets not given the best we can because the owner thinks insurance is a con or they just refuse to pay for treatments is horrible. self insuring is all very well - but you need to be able to get your hands on 2k or so immediately because if something happens before you’ve saved up, then what? ( and that’s before a household emergency that might have a greater need for the money!)
every payment plan that a vet lets a client set up is money out of the practice - the staff still expect paying, the rates still need payment, buildings and equipment still need maintaining, wholesalers still expect payment - that installment client isn’t helping with any of the costs - but bills still need paying.

over and above all that though - to be told you don’t care about the animals because the owner ( who chose to have them!) doesn’t want to pay for treatment they need is horrible.

That’s pretty cheap for blood tests! My dog has run up £4.5k in diagnostic fees in the past 3 weeks. Vet fees are not cheap!

Basic prices are usually displayed on the vets website.
You're absolutely right about cost. If I start a procedure that turns out to be far more involved than I originally thought, I will contact the client at the time to explain why and check they are still happy to go ahead.

@Bigblackandreddog I have huge respect for all you do but as a cat lover the kitten one makes me wince particularly. A fracture ffs. Get it in the right position and a kitten will heal in no time.

Anyway yeah insure your pets people.

@iloveeverykindofcat last week we had two owner sign overs, one 8 month old kitten with a fracture and a puppy with a congenital problem the breeder couldn’t be bothered to take responsibility for. It’s something that happens every single week.

Both of these will be treated entirely by using profit from the business, staff taking responsibility or donations, none of any of the profit goes to us by the way other than a standard salary.

Often, when an animal is signed over we are subject to a huge amount of abuse from the previous owner or social media attacks because we do not return it to the original home if it’s able to be fixed.

We also treat a huge amount of wildlife for free. Last week we had foxes, birds of prey, 2x seals and a badger. None of this is seen by the public but maybe it should be as it would stop the constant abuse.

Thinking about this some more, it does seem that the OP was only expecting the information to which she is legally entitled under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations which require prices, or some indication of how they are calculated, to be provided before the consumer is committed to the transaction.

It does seem that a lot of vets are a bit too slack about this. Perhaps there should be a table of charges displayed in the waiting room, and the vet should ask the pet owner 'Have you read this? Do you have any questions about pricing?'

We do pick up lots of issues on pre-op bloods. Mainly we are looking for liver or kidney problems because anaesthetic drugs are metabolised by these organs so we can make changes accordingly.
Statistically older pets are more likely have issues but we do see younger ones with problems from time to time.
It’s a mini blood panel, not the full works and it’s offered rather than insisted upon. Again it boils down to informed consent, budgets, how the client feels about it etc.
Please don’t get angry with us for offering it ( yes that does happen). If you don’t want the blood simply check the correct box on the form.

@Trudij123 That's really sad. When Zara needed the ankle arthodesis after the dislocation the vet asked me if I had insurance and I could visibly see the relief when I said yes. It must be terrible for vets to see a healthy animal with an injury they absolutely could fix and the owner can't pay it. He said it will take I while to heal but the prognosis is very good - and it was. There's a slight loss of range of movement in the ankle but its painless and she can run and jump with no problems.

the reason a vet will advise pre-op bloods is because animals are massively stoic and don’t always let on when something is wrong. ( this increases massively with prey animals) easiest way to check there’s nothing underlying that would need extra care under anesthesia is to blood test.
ask for price of castration, that’s what you’ll get told. Bloods aren’t included in that price as standard because not everyone will want them.

and the reason you get asked if your pet is insured as one of the early questions is so the vet knows what kind of tests and treatment are available to them from the get go. It’s nothing to do with throwing the kitchen sink at the pet regardless ( there are criteria you have to meet for the insurance company to be happy to pay out) and it gives the security for the vet to suggest the absolute best tests and treatments available rather than trying to do things on the cheap to keep costs down while not compromising treatment.

Vets and nurses want the same thing as owners - happy, healthy pets - help them out a bit though!!!

It’s laughable that people actually think vets get commission or any extra money for what they sell or do.

Im sure the people working at Tesco are jumping with joy at the commission when you do your weekly shop too 🤔

Obviously they don’t believe vets or nurses are salaried just like everybody else…

I would say YANBU to an extent.

You have to pay the bill now but I'm surprised at your vet.

Ddog wasn't insured. Every time we went to the vet, she would check if we had insurance and, if not, let us know the cost before proceeding. No surprise bills.

One time she was considering a scan just to confirm something. She thought it would be about £1,000, which we had the money for, but said that she'd check first.

She was horrified that one place quoted £5k+ and the other upto £10k. For a scan! She was 99% sure of her diagnosis and only wanted confirmation so we didn't go ahead. (For contrast I had had a similar scan privately for myself just prior to this and it was about £200).

It seems that, because the assumption is that everyone has insurance, the expensive treatments are used straight away. The customer doesn't pay immediately, the insurance company does, but then increases the premiums drip by drip.

I’m not saying the vets are wrong but I’d be questioning that as ‘standard’ for straightforward surgeries that would be fairly short in duration. We don’t do it as standard for humans, including young kids if you want size comparisons 😝. It is necessary in some cases but not as a general rule, particularly for routine ops and where there is no indication investigations would be required for underlying conditions. Would be interesting to hear from any vets here on how animals may vary in this regard, wildly different physiological response to anaesthetics??

@girlmom21 Yes, we had blood tests done when our small dog had his dental work to detect any underlying conditions. It’s scary putting a pet under anesthetic, I was mentally prepared for him not to come out-but he did and he’s fine!

Our vets recommended blood tests before our dog had surgery (not castration) to check for any underlying health conditions that could be affected by the anaesthetic. We paid the extra because he's tiny so giving him the anaesthetic was already a risk.