...to not want to take my dog to the vet?

[BroccoliSpears]

I have a lab who hasn't eaten her breakfast .

She's been throwing up bile yesterday and today.

I suspect that she ate something she shouldn't have on her walk with the dog walker on Wednesday. She has a very sensitive tummy.

Now, my immediate reaction is to phone the vet and firstly describe symptoms and see if they think I should bring her in, and then carry on following vet's instructions until she's better.

Here's why I don't want to:

They ALWAYS say to bring her in. Of course they do. They are a business and they don't get my £30 consultation fee if I don't bring her in. It's frustrating though to initially be told "Oh yes, definitely bring her in" and then later that day be standing in the consulting room while the vet says vaguely "Can't immediately see anything wrong with her. Bring her back tomorrow if there's no change. That'll be £30 please".

They ALWAYS want me to bring her back in 24 hours. "Oh look, she's better. That'll be another £30 please".

They ALWAYS start talking immediately about scans and blood tests and other expensive things.

They never actually do anything to fix the dog. She always gets better by herself. They often manage to adsvise me to give her rehydration salts or a jab of something "just in case, and that'll be another £60 please".

I always leave feeling I've been fleeced.

So instead I'm sitting here feeling guilty that I'm not taking my dog to the vet because of money.

Are all vets like this? It's frustrating having so little knowledge about dog health, so I can't be in charge but have to do as they suggest.

yea my vets exactly the same, always says that we cant diagnoise her without seeing her. How the hell does NHS 24 work then - they assess if your needing to be seen by someone else. I think vets pray on over anxious pet owners to make them feel unsure whats wrong with their dog and make them feel guilty - I have been a victim of this trap before - now I tend to force myself to keep a eye on her and see what happens.xx

Our lab ate a bush (yes the whole thing) from the garden and was sick for a few days and had to have his stomach pumped.. cost us £300 !

he didnt learn his lesson though, he's eat rocks and broken glass if you put it in his dinner bowl.

your girl must be feeling poorly if she's off her food. Hope she's better in the morning.

My jrt has a sensitive tum, and, to her disgust is only allowed the dry food made with chicken and rice. Anything tasty and she has awful diaohearh with blood, and is sick (poor girl). The only cure is to starve her for 24 hrs, then poached chicken or fish and rice still the pooh gets firm again (sorry if tmi!).

Nail on the head Chelle: "vets pray on over anxious pet owners to make them feel unsure whats wrong with their dog and make them feel guilty" - though I'm sure not all vets are like this, it's certainly how I feel about mine.

Oh these doggies. I hope she's better in the morning too.

you must be at the wrong vets

do change your consults sound extortionate

we dont charge for next day consult

jab £30? not at ours

injection and consult at ours 27 quid ..

how can you diagnose without seeing an animal - what do you want free phone consult

if you had to pay for seeing gp youd soon shush about vets

My (5mths) baby jrt eats everything, we live by the sea, and yesterday she found a dead fish, a fish skeleton and was drinking seawater, but she's fine. Show the other one a chunk of Bakers and you have to evacuate because of the smells she emmits!

how much is your solicitor on a saturday?

emergency private health appointmnet?

call bloody dyno rod on a saturday and see how much it is?

get real

actually - i have called nhs 24 many of times and been diagnoised over the phone without them seeing me - what makes a difference with a dog?

I agree not all vets are like what is described - mines is (multi chain vet). Many a time have i called the vets for advice and they say bring them down, i take her down and piss all is wrong with her - its just me being over anxious.

Obviously you will be defensive as you work at a vets PaulaYatesBiggestFan - i understand this.

PY Fan - No, I don't want a free phone consultation. Like I said in my OP, my vets is a business - I do understand that I have to pay for their services!

My grievance is more that I'll phone them and say for example that my dog has been sick a few times and hasn't eaten since yesterday lunchtime, should I bring her in? They'll tell me "Oh my goodness yes we definitely ought to check her over we'll see her in three hours but phone if she deteriorates between now and then" leaving me all panicked. Then, when I go in, I'm seen by a (lovely and very laid back) vet who gives her a quick look and says that really there's nothing to do at this stage and bring her back if she's still like it tomorrow. That's two consultation fees instead of one.

As the long-term health care providers for my dog, I don't think it's unreasonable of me to expect a relationship of trust whereby they will say if they don't really need to see her until tomorrow, even if it means turning away £30. The whole system makes me feel I'm not sure I trust them whatever they tell me.

(Although I do see that if they say not to come til tomorrow and my dog gets much worse overnight it doesn't reflect well on them and they'd soon have people complaining.)

Yes, I am being unreasonable I suppose. I just don't want to feel so fleeced. Half of the time I'm paying £30 for 3 minutes of nothing - not even a feel of her tummy or a look at her gums.

Not sure I understand what paying for a gp has to do with it. I don't begrudge my darling dog a penny. I do begrudge my vet cashing in on my vulnerability as an anxious dog owner, which rightly or wrongly, is how I feel.

no difference if it is not an emergency

if you call nhs direct chelle the government pays the person on the end of the phone

if you call the vet - the vet gives his hard earned time for free

you work for free and see how you like it

also ask everyone you know tp work for free and pick up the phone 24/7 giving free advice in the middle of the night whenever necessary

ring your plumber 3 am new years eve and he would tell you where to get off

your vet would see you.

brocolli - we would never say that

we would say 'if you are worried' bring her down otherwise offer diet advice and signs to look out for

vets get such a hard time
check out your dentists and gps car next time you are out

then check out your vets

I don't mean to give vets in general a hard time, just my own vets in my experience. It must be frustrating if you feel vets are always done down, particularly if yours offers exactly the kind of advice I wish mine would. You're not in Leeds are you? I'm looking to transfer to a nice vets surgery !

do vets not get paid hourly rate? surely they get paid whether they are treating a patient or giving advice over the phone regardless. plus your only talking about 2 minutes on a phone to give a little bit of advice to assess whether the situation is emergency or can possibly be monitored. I agree that vets do a gr8 job at what they do but so do nurses and they get paid pennys - just because a nurse is paid to care for patients on a ward - doesnt mean to say they cant answer a telephone!!!!

vets get paid an hourly rate?

errr no!

they would be loaded 24/7 365 days a year
but no

that s fine chelle but 5 mins to you - the bloke next door man down the street
1 hour called to an R T A

ALL EATS INTO YOUR SATURDAY NIGHT

tell you what you call us up for a swift five minute consult and then you can nip by and clean my bog for the equivalent thats fair

what's 5 minutes?

Paula, are you a vet?

Brocolli, change vets!

Mine are great, my pup had an allergic reaction to something a few days after her 2nd jab, vet (we were away from home) said steroids would cancel jabs, poor doggy was so unhappy we said just do it. Went to home vet for 3rd set to counteract steroids and she didn't charge to do it, just as a gesture of goodwill. That's the service you want!

Very unhappy with our vet at the moment. Our last vet was wonderful and has twice treated / given diagnosis and advice to us when we happened to bump into him on our way to the vets! First time our dog had been stung (no fee), second time dog had eaten neurofen (only charged £2 for the pills).

In contrast we paid £30 consultation for a general check up, where we were advised tests (costing £70) for a condition our dog had previosly had tests for. As the tests were done the vet told me there would be nothing to worry about as it was unlikely anything was wrong .

God knows why I agreed to it.

oh yea i totally get what your saying but im not talking about out of hours advice - im just talking about normal working hours.

blimey, this is a can of worms, i do think that SOME vets are very money orientated. But MOST vets are animal lovers who love their job. To be honest, we have the opposite problem at our practise and rather wish we had more clients like brocolli (well did, i dont work there anymore). The times we have people ring up and say, "i have to see the vet, its an emergency, my dog has been sick!" I think Brocolli is doing the right thing, she monitored, the dog didnt get better, so as its the weekend she took it to the vet this morning. It does sound like she doesnt have a good relationship with her vet and should consider changing.

Whoever said, do vets get paid hourly, no, their either work for themselves or are salaried. It IS a license to print money, but then so is being a Doctor. Vet nurses like human nurses, work their arses off for a pittance!

I have said to people, we can't diagnose until we have seen the animal, but that is usually because they want a diagnosis AND treatment over the phone. If BRocolli had rung me, my response most likely would have been to make her an appointment for the next day and ask her to ring and cancel if the dog improved, that is because we were a busy practice and would often be over booked. There have been times when i have said to owners who want to make an appointment for the next day, actually, i would feel better if we see your pet today, based on what they have told me over the phone. I base this on experience and knowledge (im not a vet but an ex vet nurse who worked on reception) and if someone rings me with a puppy with V+D, i am more comfortable having the animal seen straight away as they can dehydrate quickly. If they ring me and say my labrador has been sick, i'll think, huh, labradors and offer them the appointment they want.

I can sympathise with both sides of the coin here. The classic call is the one you get 5 minutes before home time from someone who's animal has been sick all week, but they owners have been busy, but now they simply must see the vet there and then and couldnt possibly wait until the next morning. Then they get all irate when you say, could you PLEASE get here as soon as possible (you know, i have a family to get home to!) and they say, well i have to get the dog in the car, drive to you (half hour drive) and they get there and the dog is jumping around the surgery like a jack in a box!! But of course you can never turn these people away, there might well be a genuine problem, it has happened to me on more than one occasion and the vet has ended up having to do emergency surgery, or the animal needed to go on a drip - funny that it was always ME that got it in the neck for booking these people in, emergency or not I dont work there anymore

Lucyellensmum 'licence to print money'

i just dont get that

would ask dp but he is at work

Message withdrawn

just cant help posting that dp been back to lunch then out again on 'emergency'

Reading this with the greatest interest!! I am a vet (p/t, and currently on maternity leave- thank God!!)
PYBF and LEM- you 2 obviously work in vets!
I can understand why everyone thinks vets are ripping them off, but it is very difficult to diagnose over the phone, hence the reason I have very little faith in NHS 24! I have had people tell me their dog has "a massive bleeding lump" that turned out to be chewing gum stuck to his fur (was sooo happy to stay 3/4hr late to see that "emergency"!)Another time, a guy said he didn't know if it was an emergency, but his dog was bleeding from its head. We told him to bring it in. Half its skull was hanging off and blood was shooting 4ft in the air from a severed artery- he'd run over it with the lawnmower- NOT SURE IF iTS AN EMERGENCY????!! I saw a dog with a "painful swelling" at 3am, owners insisted. Turned out to be a hard-on! So you see the problem!! Not all dog owners/ pet owners can be relied upon to give you useful info over the phone, and that one you don't see could be the one you really should have.

I'd be happy to leave your dog 24h, broccoli. But with some people, if we tell them its nothing, and to leave it, they do. Regardless if the dog then goes dramatically downhill. And dies/ ends up at emergency (more expensive) vet. Then it's our fault for refusing to see them or "brushing them off." You really can't win! We see most things to cover ourselves, so noone can say "but you told me it would be ok...." There are so many wee things that we will pick up on that owners don't notice. We don't charge for a repeat appointment if it just to say that it is all fine now. We do try to get people to come back, again to cover ourselves. All too often people come back 4 wks later when the animal is seriously ill, and say "well, it never really got better the last time!" You sound like a bunch of sensible owners, but you'd be surprised at the numpties out there!! And my job is to try to look after their animals, sometimes despite the owners!

Re coining it in- I wish!! I don't own my own practice, so get paid a set salary. When I was full time, I earned less than my DH who left school at 16 and joined the navy. Its not as well-paid as people think, unless you have your own business. To me, I do it cos I love it (sometimes. On a p/t basis!) If I was financially minded I'd have taken my 6 A's and gone into almost anything else- dentistry, medicine, law... I DO understand why people think vets must make a fortune, but if we didn't have the NHS people would probably understand better just how expensive healthcare can be- everyone is expected to have ultrasound, xrays, blood analysers, and all these things cost a LOT. Add wages, rent and rates, utilities, drug stock etc etc and you begin to see what your money is buying. As well as 10 minutes of my professional time But you should feel like you are getting value for money, and if you don't then do change vets. I am amazed when I go to the GP, wait 40 mins for my appointment, tell him briefly what is wrong, he asks no questions, hardly does any, never mind a full, clinical examination and writes out a prescription as fast as he can. In and out in 2 minutes!! ALL my patients get a full history taken and a full clinical examination. There may be vets out there like my GP, but you get to vote with your feet with them!!

BTW-now that I have ranted!!!- how is your dog today??? Did you go to the vet's? What did they say?

Paula: I am not saying that vets do not work hard for, and deserve every penny they earn. But it IS a very lucrative business, fueled by peoples attitudes towards their pets and the necessity of vets to the farming industry etc. Also, the very best treatments etc are made almost immediately available to the animals and this has to be paid for. I mean, how many NHS or private even, human patients present with a tumour one day and are having it removed the next, unless of course we are talking emergency surgery, you know what i mean though. Things like orthopeadic surgery performed within a week at the clients convenience must be almost unheard of in human medicine.

My bosses were always moaning they don't earn enough money, although pretty much that was tongue in cheek, their 4 mercedes and luxery houses and holidays suggest they are doing OK. I also have friends working as salaried vets who have to put in all the out of hours work etc and work their backsides off for an average wage. The partners in our practice work a four day week, manage to find time to slope off to the gym during the working day and don't do any out of hours call outs. Saying that, they DID have to do this, and they have had to work hard to get where they are, have run the business very well and are now reaping the rewards (and have a printing press out the back, printing money). Beats me why they moan though

So i stand by my comment, it IS a license to print money as it is probably one of the most lucrative businesses i can think of. I did not mean that this money isnt well deserved when compared to the service provided. I wasn't saying they get paid for doing nothing. My DP is a builder, starting out in his own business, we are just staying afloat and he works all the hours god sends, one day, i am hoping his business will be a license to print money too.

Didnt mean to cause offence paula, i think you misunderstood me, or more likely i didnt express myself so well

Brocolli, i hope your dog is ok