Friday, May 25, 2012

I'm not your bitch. Shame on you.



Why the hell do you even bring your dog in to see me if you aren’t going to let me do anything?

I don’t want to have your depressed, dehydrated, vomiting and bloody diarrhea dog in my hospital if I can’t help him. You telling me he has This or That disease which you have diagnosed based on a prior experience at another hospital of which you did the same thing to them. You didn’t get a diagnosis then so telling me that is what he has now holds no water.

Declining every single frickin’diagnostic except my exam gets us just about nowhere. Your dog is vomiting. He is not in shape to take oral medication. He is too dehydrated for your requested subcutaneous fluids to help him much. They are a step in the right direction but your dog is dying while his body can start to absorb them. And then you declined even that anyway.

Thank you, thank you so much to allow me to give him an anti-vomiting injection. At least that will help him a little bit. I feel so sorry for your poor, poor loving dog that you do not deserve. Do you know how much is of a hole it puts in my soul to see such a wretchedly sick dog and not be allowed to help him?

When I send home the information on your invoice that your dog is very ill and needs diagnostics and IV fluids and medications or he may get sicker and/or die, I mean it. When I ask you to either take him to another hospital or reconsider our recommendations I’m doing that for the dog. It’s not for me. Well, yes it may assuage my guilty feelings for not calling animal control on you immediately. But I really do want to help you and the dog. I’ll give you a brownie point for not yet being rude to me. That’s why I haven’t fired you. But my poor receptionist is struggling with trying to help you while doing her job as a go between. No one here wants to see or know a dog is suffering. It deflates all our staff to see this. It puts us one foot closer to the grave.

Telling me that you’ve spent thousands of dollars on diagnostics on this dog is incorrect according to the medical records. Yes, when he bloated about 5-6 years ago you had the cost of the surgery. However you’ve not spent any bucks at your prior clinic, the animal ER or here since then for the chronic vomiting that has occurred. We discussed on your first visit here the recommended diagnostics to help determine what the problem really is.

Now your dog is suffering. He has one or more medical conditions which are making him suffer. You need to buck it up and do the humane thing. Either let him go or get him some help.

When you call me the next morning and ask for oral medication for what is your new diagnosis of him and tell me he is eating and drinking forgive me for declining to participate in your delusional world. I cannot accept the liability. I myself would not even be trying any oral medicine or food or water on a pet that is retching his guts out and has a nasty bloody diarrhea. So I cannot give you any guidance since you are not listening to me. Although I have not fired you as a client I figured you would have fired yourself.

Lady, I’m a doctor, a doctor for animals. I’m not your bitch to get the drugs that you think he needs. I know what the rule outs for your dog’s condition. I know how to rule out the incorrect ones and help lead to the true diagnosis.

Your job as the owner and caretaker for this poor pooch is to get real, stop fooling yourself and recognize that your dog needs a hands on doctor like me. Your job if at all possible is to have prepared for his medical needs. If you haven’t done that then you should get real about the suffering you are putting him through because you are unrealistic. You should prepare to ask for help from your family, neighbors, friends, clergy, pawn shop, etc. or to say good-bye to your dog. Why should your dog suffer because of you?

Now, some of the readers here might want me to understand the economics. I do. This is not about economics, it’s about priorities.

What this is about is that you think you can direct me to get the drugs you think her dog needs. Lady, I’m not your bitch. If he has a chance to recover the lack of proper care will have caused some permanent damage to his kidney and possible other tissues. How do you do that to such a great soul? Shame on you.

9 comments:

  1. How does someone put their animal through that? When we purchased our house, we got something that we could easily afford because we didn't want to risk not being able to afford to take our dogs to the vet if anything happened to them. I couldn't live with myself if something that I knowingly neglected to do killed my dogs. How can someone have so little compassion for another little being, and such delusion that they can just hope the symptoms go away?

    Neglect is abuse, and it's terribly under-prosecuted. People like that shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a sweet, loving animal.

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  2. I hate it for you. I want to be verbally abusive to her, but that will get no where. People like this suck the life from the staff and the vet. No one wants to send home a dying dog. Talk about little increments of PTSD and compassion fatigue. I hurt for you guys and I hurt in prep for the next time it happens to me.

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  4. Animal Control Officers in my city might intervene in a case like this. But maybe that's a road you guys can't/don't want to go down for a variety of reasons, and I understand that. But anyone can make an anonymous call, though, and our ACOs would at least check it out at the dog's home. That takes you out of the equation. Just a thought...

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  5. http://www.avma.org/myveterinarian/responsible.asp

    The AVMA has prepared guidelines for resposible pet ownership. It's not the hard. Most of it is common sense and caring.

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  6. YES. YES. YES. Thank you for writing this!

    ~ER Doc

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  7. See this on a weekly basis in ER. PTB of ER don't want us to make the owners feel bad by telling them how cruel this is or by calling ACO....also have been told this area won't do anything.

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  8. Where is the "Like" button? Been there, done that, caused me to leave practice for a while...

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