An interesting article..........

[Ellas mum]

Read this article in the paper this morning, it makes interesting reading.....makes you think.
For me, the last paragraph says it all.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... wners.html

[Cobi and Ginnies Mum]

I told my Mum to save the Daily Mail today because I had seen the 'banner' headlines when they were reviewing the papers on BBC this morning.... well where do we start... Ginnie is off again for a followup at the vets this evening, her abscess in the lower part of her ear has gone down and all the swelling has gone out of her ear... so no haematoma there thankfully... pink steradent tablets at £1.56p each x 2 each day, not as pallatable as they think... 3 cubes of cheese and then Cobi nearly swooped in to finish it off !!! peanut butter seems to be the answer.

Going back to the above article and to when our Abigail was taken ill and was at our vets hospital for a week and she had numerous tests, (she showed symptons very similar to Timber and other dogs that have had bone cancer) but we were told a small sliver of bone had broken away from an athritic joint and was poisoning her, we knew on that last day when 4 vets from our practice examined her and 3 of them said we should 'let her go', but one vet said perhaps we ought to amputate her leg, as much as we wanted to keep her we both said NO to his suggestion. OK we had one heck of a bill, the money doesn't matter.... it just hurts when you haven't got your dog. We trust the 3 vets that we still use, and I would not use that one again unless he was the only one there in an emergency.

Interestingly we had changed from another vet as he had put Abigails phenobarbs (Abby was epileptic from the age of 4yrs) up from just over £9 to over £16 overnight even though they were the same 'batch number'. We changed vets and then had her blood tested right away and found she needed a third extra tablets each day and our new vet charged only £11 for the same tablets including the extra dose.. we always had a feeling that because we never questioned anything up until then and having spoken to friends over the years who also took their dogs there, there may have been different prices for different clients. I think it did make a difference what vehicle you turned up in, but then I'm cynical !!!

I always used to have my dogs insured until Direct Line put their excess up to £70 and with the proviso that their vet must speak to your vet before any treatment could be given (not even claimed for anything) ... I pointed out to them that we were talking about a dogs life and not a vehicle that was damaged awaiting repair... since then I've put the money aside in premium bonds, a couple of small wins is still better than the interest rates at this present time !!!

[Ellas mum]

Hi Lynda,

Good to hear that Ginnie's on the mend.
When we had Leigh, our first Golden, we took out a Pet Insurance which at the time we thought reasonable. She was lucky, she had good health until her later years when she developed mammary tumours, two operations, then she had a third particularly aggressive tumour. The vet advised against another op' and was so kind and compassionate with her at the end. At the beggining of her treatment, we were asked if we had an insurance and if not they would give us a breakdown of the costs involved, I suppose to give us the choice, but how on earth could you make a choice like that? Some people would have to!

We don't have a Pet Plan now, like you, we put the money into savings for Ella, much better in our bank than theirs

[janrobinson]

Pleased Ginnie is getting better.

I have read the article and was shocked but certainly not surprised. This is the tip of the iceberg. As the author said there is good and bad in every trade and profession and everyone can not be excellent or caring. Did you know that there is no Ombudsman for Vets.

[CarolynM]

Its great to hear the news about Ginnie.

I have been going to the same vets for 25+ years and trust them. They know that our oldies aren't insured and are rescues (the cost was too much because of their age and not knowing their medical history) and when anything has needed to be done they have always given us a breakdown of the cost and the option of paying by instalments (with 0% finance).

We had Chloe there last night with a cough and came away with the recommendation to get a bottle of childs Benylin.

The vets there know what we think about our dogs and we always ask them "would you have it done if it was your dog?"

I suppose with everything there is good and bad in each profession, its a shame when some pull the reputation of others down.

xx