Terrified of vet. Surgery aborted.

[ToppTotty]

Our boy needs an operation to remove a benign tumour on his foot that is causing pain. He has had a few bad experiences at the vet and is terrified of him as a result. He was due to have a small surgery earlier this week to remove the tumour but was hyperventilating so much they stopped the procedure after giving him the anasthetic. It took hours to get his breathing back to hormal. Will going to another vet help or will he be terrified of all vets now? There isn't anyone locally so it would be a day's travel to get to one.
(And couldn't they have given him a sedative prior to the anasthetic?)

Any advice will be gratefully received! He's a huge 8 year old chocolate lab and is the sweetest big baby you ever saw...😍

Take him to another vet! It might also help if the new vet is a different sex/gender (?) than the one he had a bad experience with. Poor pup. Could you stay somewhere overnight?

I would work on lots of desensitisation.

Take him near the vets - lots of treats for calm behaviour, then see if they'll allow you to just go in, sit in reception, meet the nurses etc.

Try and make the vets a really positive experience - you may need to try a different vet practise, though.

My vet has given me drugs for our stressy dog before she goes under anaesthetic. We will be giving her some the night before, and then morning of before heading to the vet. So yes some vets do give them.

Our get prescribed Xanax for one of our dogs (fireworks). I would highly recommend it, dogs on Xanax are hilarious (not being callous - I'm pretty sure he had an amazing time).

*vet

A friend's dog gets sedated in the car park, after sedatives at home I believe

The Xanax sounds good. He might have had that with a previous surgery. His legs were all wobbly and he looked like he was drunk! 😄

I think I will enquire about pre-anaesthetic sedation when we visit the NEW vet! Thank you all for the advice.

It was brilliant. We dosed him up on bonfire night, and he spent a little while sitting bolt upright with his eyes nearly closed, then just very slowly keeled over.

JesusInTheCabbageVan😍