The Measure of a vet by Foley Monster

There are few loves in life more precious than a dog.  Our parents love us so much they would spare no expense to keep us healthy.  Unfortunately a good vet is hard to find.  Mommy and Daddy have gone through a lot of them and are still searching.  If your parents find one make sure they never let them go.

This is one of the ways I measure a vet.  Ask them if Pedigree is a good dog food.  My Dad was talking to a woman who had a sick dog and he asked her what she was feeding the poor pooch.  The woman answered Pedigree and told my Dad that her vet said it was a good food

Now let me say this about dog food.  There are a lot of reasons parents feed their dogs certain brands.  I got a high end brand, but Mommy and Daddy have no children, and two tiny dogs, so feeding us a high-end food was not expensive for them.  If they owned two Great Danes they may not have been able to do so.  Parents have other expenses and sometimes they have to feed their dogs food that isn’t high end, and that is fine.  You can only do what can do.

But when a vet says a food like Pedigree is a healthy food they are not saying it because they believe it, they are saying it because they are being paid by the food company to say it.  It’s like a liquor or a tobacco company paying doctors to say smoking and drinking are the answers for everything.  If they are willing to say that feeding a lower quality food is all right for a dog then they are willing to say anything.

Not that I am really blaming them.  The world needs veterinarians and it costs a lot of money for a student to become a vet.  Unless they are wealthy to begin with, and wealthy people usually don’t choose professions like veterinary science, the vets leave school with huge debts, because you can only become a vet by going to college, and nothing sucks up money faster than college.  With these debts the young vets need to make deals to be able to support their families, and usually such deals are made with devils, and there are few worse devils than big dog food.

          Perhaps that is why so many parents prefer the older vets who don’t owe bills to anyone and can use their own judgment.

          Praying that all my friends have the very best vets who get the best health care regardless of the cost just like their humans.

          What’s that?  Humans don’t either?  Maybe that’s why it’s so crowded up here.

The Vets of our Lives

Last Thursday we went for our annual vet visit. I know you are all concerned with the results so let me tell you upfront we are both fine. We call this our annual trip to the vet, but it’s like saying our annual trip to the Super Bowl, because our vet is never in the same place from year to year.

The first vet I went to was in Norton MA. He wasn’t a bad vet. But his waiting room was cramped and I went there with Blake, and Blake did not like the vet at all. She was a terrible panter and shaker. And the vet was always running late. Blake was ill, and the trip alone got her so worked up, that the next year we went to a new vet,

This vets was in Raynham. They seemed like the perfect vet. There was a large waiting room, they were very good when Blake was transitioning to the Bridge and very comforting when she finally passed over in Mommy’s arms in one of the examining rooms. We were all very happy there, then my new brother, Jax, began crying out in pain. Mommy took him to Raynham. There was a new vet there. He said that Jax had a shoulder strain. Mommy said she doubted it was a shoulder strain. To this day she is still mad at herself for not getting a second opinion. The vet gave Jax some medicine for the pain. A week later Jax took a serious turn for the worse. He couldn’t move without crying, he had bloodshot eyes, he was in horrible pain. Daddy called the vet who refused to see him saying Jax just needed another prescription. Mommy and Daddy took Jax to the the emergency vet in Bridgewater. They told Mommy and Daddy there was nothing they could do and Jax was put down. When Daddy got home there was a message from the vet in Raynham giving results for a dog that wasn’t even Jax. Oh how Daddy wishes he saved that message. Mommy, Daddy, and I sued in small claims court, we won, but lost the appeal because the vet spent thousands of dollars on “expert” witnesses. Anyway, once a vet kills your dog, you sue him, win, then lose, you can’t go back.

So then the hospital in Bridgewater became our vet. They might have killed my sister Copper. We can’t prove it. Copper got her rabies shot and it caused a large tumor to grow in her leg. They operated on her and took it out but three months later she passed away in her sleep. They said her little heart gave out but could it have been something that entered her blood stream from the shot and traveled to her heart? We don’t know. Then we took in little Skye. The poor dog never breathed a healthy breath in her six month life. A week of that was spent at the Bridgewater hospital where they lost her. Oh not lost her like she went to the Bridge. They just didn’t know where she was. It took them a couple of hours to call us back telling us they found her and how she was. They sent her home but she couldn’t walk in a straight line. We took her back to the hospital but since they had so many different vets we got who hadn’t seen her yet and wanted to run the same tests that kept coming back inconclusive. We had to fight our way out of there with her.

A woman Daddy works with told him of a very nice vet in Middleboro. They took Skye there. Skye didn’t come home. But they were grateful to the vet because he told them the truth. There were all sorts of tests, operations, and procedures he could do, costing thousands of dollars, and at the end of the day, after much suffering, chances were very high Skye would die anyway. He helped send little Skye to the Bridge last night.

He was a good vet, but a little old fashioned. He liked giving shots, lots of shots, even when we didn’t want them. And he was very expensive. And he was far away. And old. He started giving some of his practice time to a younger doctor who we didn’t trust as much. My Daddy’s cousin told him of a vet he went to right down the road from where we were living. We made as appointment and were very happy with this vet. And he didn’t kill any of us.

But he too was older and phasing out of his practice. He had another vet helping him and we did not like him at all. He used to hold us by our front legs and let us hang to look us over. It took his and his assistant four time to weight Pocket getting different weights each time which is remarkable given that she weighs five pounds. Then he became insulting to us. He told us we had bad breath, said we had bad teeth, he was the worst first date ever. Most of all he stressed that I had to have my teeth cleaned immediately. If not it could lead to premature death and peace without honor. Mommy didn’t want me to get even light anesthesia but it was stressed to her the importance of having my teeth cleaned. He had me put on a list to get my teeth cleaned immediately. This was in January of 2011. They called in November 2011. By this time we decided not to get the teeth done, and to find a new vet.

We found one is Swansea, that my cousin Bailey goes to, which was good news, because we were running out of towns. We rode there in style in our new car seats. We got there and we found a nice big waiting room. Of course everyone came over to tell us how cute we were, again, being beautiful is work. We got brought in the room, weighed, and then the doctor came in.

I was up first. He checked out my teeth, and, while they aren’t pearly white, he said if we continued using some gel on them they should be fine. He found everything about me perfect and Pocket the same and it is one of the best vet experiences we’ve had. And we’re quite confident he won’t kill either one of us.