re: Do vets actually ever cure anything?

You never know what someone financial situation and/or loyalties lie; $4k isn’t shite to lots of people, millions of people.

quote:

---

One thing to consider from the vets' perspective is too many times the owner brings in the pet that is indeed already in the process of dying. It's more difficult for the vet than most people think.The suicide rate for vets is real.

---

It's a difficult profession in a lot of ways. Especially the death part. Putting down a dog you love with an owner you care about sucks.

Occasionally you have people go mental around the time of euthanasia. I had a rough one with a dog with what I believe was a brain tumor that didn't die smoothly. The owners were extremely agitated and the dog could tell before I gave it a sedation cocktail. Even with presedation the dog was vocalizing.(whining) after a massive overdose of pentobarbital and I had to give it a second dose quickly. I've had to euthanize probably a thousand or more dogs and still remember that one. Nothing that you could do but you always remember someone screaming at you with murder in their eyes for something you couldn't prevent and their emotional state likely contributed to. There's a shitty part of me that still remembers that hateful old woman and her son.

We deal with people abusing pets. We deal with unwanted pets. We deal with real poverty cases and many more claiming poverty. If you ever find yourself "comping" a procedure then the precedent is set and that person and their friends will expect more. This way leads to bankruptcy. Ironically enough it also leads to more loud complaints. Once a customer identifies their ability to manipulate you they will escalate.

We also deal with drug abusers and seekers. People using their pet's pain medications. We deal with threats. Most commonly from the people who are the drug seekers or the one most responsible for the pet illness or injury.

This is the wrong thread for most of the people posting to respond positively but here goes.

Yes we do save a lot of pets lives. We save them after they are off leash and get hit by a car. We save them when owners don't vaccinate and they get parvovirus. We save them when you don't spay them and they get pyometra. We save them when the owner leaves their clothes laying around and they eat your underwear. We save them you bring them in before they are dead from Addison's.

We don't save them all. We can't fix everything. The money is a lot when there's an emergency and blood work and other diagnostics aren't cheap. But they are a fraction of what you pay for human medical care. Let me know when your orthopedic surgeon will do his next knee replacement for 4 to 6k. It sucks having a dog with IVDD but there's zero chance the human surgeons and radiologists would do the same thing for the amount of money involved.

I love my clients that love their pets. I don't expect people outside of the profession to understand the highs and lows but I have relatively limited patience for the complaints about the profession from people who spend more on alcohol or drugs than the living creature in your house that loves you like a deity.

You didn't let him down. Your boy (or girl) loved you and loves you still.

Dog has a hangnail….”it’s time to put 7 yr old Myrtle to sleep”

Do American doctors? Getting people addicted to a pill isn’t a cure.

We paid 5k for chemo on our 10 year old GSP and it gave him 8 months of extra life in relative comfort. He had a tumor the size of a softball in his stomach that actually shrank for a while. I’m positive he would have died within a couple weeks had we done nothing.

I’d do that 10x over and thank the vets that helped us. Was a pretty difficult time in my wife and Is life moving to a new city away from family and that dog was super important to us.

quote:

---

So they just treat the symptoms as opposed to root cause.

---

That is what most DR's today do they treat your symptoms

quote:

---

Golden Retriever to lymphoma

---

We lost our first Golden the same way. He started acting odd. He was not his normal joyful self. I took him to the vet and after about 1k in X-rays they found he had cancer all over. The doc suggested cancer treatment in the 5 figure range with no guarantee it would work. We chose to put him down. TAMU picked up his body for research.

Vets live by the same mantra that Big Pharma lives by.

Why cure something that you can treat for a lifetime? There is no long-term money in cures.

There is absolutely a cure for cancer, but that will not allow the FDA and big pharma to continue to rip off those who need years of treatment that ultimately only buy people time. Think about this.

quote:

---

I have relatively limited patience for the complaints about the profession from people who spend more on alcohol or drugs than the living creature in your house that loves you like a deity.

---

I like you