Fuzzy Torpedoes
Chirping
- Sep 7, 2017
- 59
- 61
- 61
There is something that should be highlighted from this story. Not all vets are equal. I've seen veterinary practices that range from incompetent to bleeding-edge. The ideal time to find that great vet is before shit hits the fan, not during, although finding it during is better than not finding it at all.
(To the OP: assuming I didn't read that part too fast and missed something, a vet's office doing cat/dog practice without an ultrasound machine doesn't sound right to me :/ . It does look like you're sticking with Dr. Carl in any case. Too bad about your $900+ spent on the first one.)
I'm not trying to be ageist but my experience with a number of veterinary offices suggests to be careful about older DVMs, and be careful of the really small practices (like 1 vet + 1 assistant). The best ones I've found work out of a local university's teaching veterinary hospital plus they teach at the university. The incompetent vet was a 2 person practice (one DVM + one assistant or something) that catered to an ethnic minority that had historically lived in the area. In another office where there were 4 vets of widely-varying ages, I came to believe that the oldest one was the worst (he was also the owner of the practice and a snob, for what it's worth).
Medicine and veterinary are NOT fields where someone who has been in-the-field for 30+ years is necessarily better than someone who's been out of school for 10 years. The opposite can be possible. A younger vet will have come out of a more modern veterinary program, for one thing. One does not want to use a vet whose whose knowledge as a vet is static, or who feels like they've been doing this so long that they are comfortable with not following the field's developments and not continuing to develop their knowledge and skill. A vet that comes off like an old-country-doctor should scare you.
I think that sometimes, when you have an animal that is in trouble, and you go to a vet, you keep telling yourself "This is a good vet, this is a good vet" because you want it to be true. You want to believe it because you're entrusting them with something that's feels so important to you. It's next to impossible to keep an objective frame of mind when you feel like your emotions are in a state of quiet, grinding terror, and here's this person who from all appearances is endeavouring to help your sick animal. If you have not slept properly (as is so common if you have an animal that is sick), your mind is further broken in ways you're unlikely to recognize at the time.
People won't necessarily be able to keep a clear head while things like this are going down. But when you are able to mentally come up for air, whenever that is, don't close your mind to looking around for a better vet than what you have. Like the OP experienced, there may be much better to be had than the first office you visited.
The vet you really want might not be conveniently-located and might require some footwork to identify. These days, vet practices have web sites and with the practice you want, you should be able to find educational/specialist/research/etc links about the specific DVMs. Also in my experience the best vets charge more $$$ BUT that's NOT a sole indicator of things. Some vets overcharge, especially ones in a location that would be likely to service what you would call middle-upper-class or upper-class. Just mentioning that to say, when you think you found that great vet, don't expect it to also be the dollar store of vets. That's not how these things work.
(To the OP: assuming I didn't read that part too fast and missed something, a vet's office doing cat/dog practice without an ultrasound machine doesn't sound right to me :/ . It does look like you're sticking with Dr. Carl in any case. Too bad about your $900+ spent on the first one.)
I'm not trying to be ageist but my experience with a number of veterinary offices suggests to be careful about older DVMs, and be careful of the really small practices (like 1 vet + 1 assistant). The best ones I've found work out of a local university's teaching veterinary hospital plus they teach at the university. The incompetent vet was a 2 person practice (one DVM + one assistant or something) that catered to an ethnic minority that had historically lived in the area. In another office where there were 4 vets of widely-varying ages, I came to believe that the oldest one was the worst (he was also the owner of the practice and a snob, for what it's worth).
Medicine and veterinary are NOT fields where someone who has been in-the-field for 30+ years is necessarily better than someone who's been out of school for 10 years. The opposite can be possible. A younger vet will have come out of a more modern veterinary program, for one thing. One does not want to use a vet whose whose knowledge as a vet is static, or who feels like they've been doing this so long that they are comfortable with not following the field's developments and not continuing to develop their knowledge and skill. A vet that comes off like an old-country-doctor should scare you.
I think that sometimes, when you have an animal that is in trouble, and you go to a vet, you keep telling yourself "This is a good vet, this is a good vet" because you want it to be true. You want to believe it because you're entrusting them with something that's feels so important to you. It's next to impossible to keep an objective frame of mind when you feel like your emotions are in a state of quiet, grinding terror, and here's this person who from all appearances is endeavouring to help your sick animal. If you have not slept properly (as is so common if you have an animal that is sick), your mind is further broken in ways you're unlikely to recognize at the time.
People won't necessarily be able to keep a clear head while things like this are going down. But when you are able to mentally come up for air, whenever that is, don't close your mind to looking around for a better vet than what you have. Like the OP experienced, there may be much better to be had than the first office you visited.
The vet you really want might not be conveniently-located and might require some footwork to identify. These days, vet practices have web sites and with the practice you want, you should be able to find educational/specialist/research/etc links about the specific DVMs. Also in my experience the best vets charge more $$$ BUT that's NOT a sole indicator of things. Some vets overcharge, especially ones in a location that would be likely to service what you would call middle-upper-class or upper-class. Just mentioning that to say, when you think you found that great vet, don't expect it to also be the dollar store of vets. That's not how these things work.
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