Too funny.

My brain goes out the window at the vets. Last visit I opted for a completely unnecessary and expensive blood test. Why? Beats me...

The other end of the stick is equally frustrating. I worked for a vet for just a couple months. That vet was willing to write a perscription for a med that is not widely tested in dogs and that I wasn't sure was appropriate for the dog. He just assumed I knew what I was doing. I found another vet that is wonderful and challenges (in a friendly way) my options for treatment and asks a lot of questions! (She even told me the side effets of the med and we decided against it for now).

i love my vet. she includes me in problem solving and assumes i'm an intelligent, informed peer. we usually quickly and readily agree on treatment. if we don't, i know i can trust her to have thought it through, and i take her advice.

in contrast, i had to take my dog to the emergency clinic one weekend and, maybe because of my relationship with my own vet, i immediately questioned the wisdom and necessity of their planned treatment. they were clearly about to treat me as a cash cow, and i ended up telling THEM what the treatment was going to be and getting a firm estimate of expenses up front. heh. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

i really surprised myself, but i was right and they were wrong, and they listened to me!

There are about 61,000+ veterinarians in the United States and like any group of people that large you're going to find the good, the bad, and the ugly among them. A veterinarian must earn a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M. or V.M.D.) and it takes about four years post graduate work to accomplish that. Entry into a four year veterinary school is highly competitive and I would say at the risk of stereotyping that most are very intelligent people.

By and large the people a veterinarian will see in the course of his/her day are the average or below average dog owner who does little to no training. Remember, not all dog owners are visiting http://www.leerburg.com or training weekly in Schutzhund or AKC like the members of this website. In fact, the large majority of pets are hardly given Basic Obedience training.

I don't take to heart the training advice that I receive from a veterinarian as it is similar to taking advice from a police officer about how to handle a criminal trial. Sure, a police officer knows parts of the law and has experience in the field, but at the end of the day you want an attorney to get advice from because even though similar they are clearly two separate fields of expertise. Same thing with a veterinarian they know a little bit about training as they deal with dogs for a living, but I'd still take the advice of my trainer every day of the week over a vets, because at the end of the day they are two separate fields. In contrast, I would never take medical advice from a trainer as the end all and be all of advice as the veterinarian is really the person to go for those concerns.

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There are about 61,000+ veterinarians in the United States and like any group of people that large you're going to find the good, the bad, and the ugly among them. A veterinarian must earn a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M. or V.M.D.) and it takes about four years post graduate work to accomplish that. Entry into a four year veterinary school is highly competitive and I would say at the risk of stereotyping that most are very intelligent people.

Yep, I agree with you 100%, vet school is no joke.

Besides, I'm sure some of them have their fun with dumb owners, as well.

lol, woody. and i live in missoula and my vet's dog is named sneakers! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Excellent post, James! Just like not lawyers are evil, not all vets are either. Vets and lawyers of the world unite! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Seriously though, as a future vet myself who has already put in 2 years of graduate education plus another 4 more coming up soon for vet school, your average vet down the street is like your primary care physician and won't necessarily be a dog behavior specialist any more than an average primary care physician would know the ins and outs of orthopedic surgery, endocrinology, or child psychiatry (opinions on the merits of psychiatry/psychology aside) like someone in those fields who has years of experience, reads the journals, and maybe does research or goes to scientific meetings, etc. Good or bad, I think a lot of people seem to perceive that vets know more about canine behavior than they might be inclined to be. If any of you have a friend who is a doctor, even if they, for example, are a cardiologist, they might be able to tell you a bit about your psoriasis on your hands, but yeah, just know there may be more out there.

This is one of the reasons though why I am getting my Mal into Schutzhund is to learn this whole other world of working canines, even if we assuredly won't go home with the national championships or anything. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> But this is an interesting conversation at any rate.

You said it James! Aslo, it is our responsibility to find the right vet for our animals, & develop a good working relationship with him/her. I have been lucky enough to develop good friendships with my regular vet, as well as a few specialists who are tops in their respective fields.

I suppose I was spoiled by the veterinarians that I worked for previously..they all knew and respected my opinions on behavior and training, and nutrition... They would at the least give me options, and at the most, come to me for advice or let me handle training questions by clients.

I used to be one of the people that furiously defended all veterinarians. I now have been on both sides of the coin.

I just don't trust vets anymore. When I get my dog (coming in the near future), I will be forced to use a vet due to seriously needing to do vaccinations. My current cat's contact with a vet is as minimal as I can manage it.

At this stage in my life, if a vet came off to me in a way like the one described did, I would stand there being quite angry, although not say anything. If the vet began to manhandle my animal or actually do anything that could affect it, I would be like this.

"Excuse me, I need to hold the (dog/cat) for just a minute here"

(takes animal)
(walks out of exam room)
(walks to receptionist to pay bill)
(any comments to vet would resemble: "what is wrong with you?" or just be a really foul look on my face).

A dog I had about 10 years ago - - one of those best-friend kind of dogs that you will remember and miss for the rest of your life - - died at a vet for reasons of absolute stupidity or greed (I am not sure which). She was getting up there a little in age but she still had a long way to go, she was a medium-sized dog and was only 9 or a few years older, I don't remember. My mom suggested I take her to the vet to get her hips x-rayed, she seemed a little stiff back there once in a while.

I took her in, and to my surprise, the vet said she would have to stay at the office and be anesthetized for the X-ray. I was surprised, as I had expected to just bring my dog to the office, get it done, and then leave with her. But, I didn't have any distrust or suspicion at the time.

Next afternoon, I get home and my mom is telling me that my dog is dead. Vet said renal failure. Now I know: don't allow a dog that is even thinking about approaching old age be anesthetized without doing full blood work first, and it took me years before I came into that knowledge on my own. This was aside from the fact that I was feeding her stupid commercial dog food, blindly trusting that if it was being sold to everybody in the grocery store next to our good, human food, it must have been formulated by somebody who cared. My dog was mildly obese and probably pre-diabetic.

Then, years later.. I had a cat. Well, my dad had the cat actually because the cat was a family cat and I had moved out of the area. The cat (previously healthy) had become unhealthy. When I moved back into the area and found out that the cat was sick, I took him into my apartment with me. He continued to get sick, and I did not understand what was wrong with him. Finally, I took him to the vet.

He had type-2 diabetes, and I was surprised. Type 2 diabetes was something I DID understand. It meant that the cat food he was eating was drastically mismatched to his body. Was cat food as sold in the grocery store just garbage, perhaps?

The vet had me using insulin injections on him, at very specific times relative to his mealtime (you might already know the deal on how that works). Then I discovered something by watching my cat closely. As the bottle of insulin aged, it became less effective. A fresh bottle was easy to OD him on, whereas later in the month, the same dose wasn't working well enough.

My cat was not going to live very long like this.

Disgusted, I read up on the internet a bit about feeding "raw" diet, and jumped into it. It was shakey at first, and I learned a lot about raw meat quality in the United States (and especially, what to avoid). I used that last bottle of insulin up, and allowed the natural loss of its potency to effectively make the dosage amount steadily decrease. Then, it was gone.

And, my cat made a miraculous recovery.

In terms of diet, cats are as predatory as snakes. Surely vets must know this .. why would all of these vets not be standing up and saying "excuse me?" at this ridiculous cat food industry?

So, this is how I now feel about my animals' veterinary care.

I am my animals' veterinarian. Only, I happen to know very little when you get right down to it, and I can't do surgery or xrays or anything like that (My only professional experience was at a vet's office as a "veterinary assistant" for about a year, working for a bunch of snob vets, so I can do a little bit but not a ton). When something happens that I think I need help with, I will go to an actual veterinarian and see what that person thinks. I'll also request and direct any tests I want done (done that with blood tests at least). and then, I have to understand the test results. I listen to the vet but I also have a people-doctor I can send the results to, to see what he thinks. Nothing seriously gets done unless I know that I, not the vet, made the decision, because I understand it and agree, after research, that it sounds smart.

I refuse to have another animal killed or almost killed by a vet. It's my animal and I am not going to trust anyone without fully understanding again. I am the one who really gives a shit, and I am the one my animal is depending on to not let anyone hurt it. I get angry just thinking about it.

(Meanwhile, I have a perfectly healthy female cat with high energy levels, no urinary tract problems, no allergies, and a lean, perfect body mass. Nothing wrong with this cat. Not spayed, so I guess we will see if she gets cancer and drops dead at the age of 8. My food formulations for her are surprisingly simple and she never gets sick from them, but it may be more complicated to do dogs correctly than it is cats.)