I took my dog in for a small growth on her toe. She gets these growths now and then and when I lived in Colorado, I always paid $20 (in addition to the visit) for a local anesthesia,cut off the growt... Read More
I took my dog in for a small growth on her toe. She gets these growths now and then and when I lived in Colorado, I always paid $20 (in addition to the visit) for a local anesthesia,cut off the growth, and a little stiptic to stop any bleeding. I asked the vet if she would do this. She said, "No" and she wanted to put the dog under general anesthesia and put her in a cone collar to keep her from licking it. I reluctantly agreed to the local because she refused to remove the growth otherwise. So, I asked if we could just bandage the wound and forget the cone. The vet said "No." The cost for this was $170. After surgery, my dog was given pretty strong pain meds for 3 or 4 days and a strict schedule of when to give them. She pretty much just slept while she was on the pain meds. The same day when the pain meds ran out, I noticed that my dog started to lick her foot despite the cone. It was at night and their office was closed, so I used the "contact us" form on the vet's web site and asked someone to call me about it if they thought it was a problem. I never heard from the vet, so I assumed it was OK. Whenever I was awake and she started to lick her foot, I would tell her No and she would stop, but I couldn't watch her while I was sleeping. Not only did the cone not stop my dog from licking her foot, but because of the cone, she developed a quarter sized ulcer on her neck surrounded up a large 5 inch in diameter raw place (which I did not see because I was told not to remove the cone) plus a deep silver-dollar sized ulcer under her chin. (I also did not see this because of the cone.) When I removed the cone the evening of the 10th day after surgery, I noticed the icky wet ulcers on her and took her to the vet the next day. The vet charged me $80 to shave the fur off of her neck and chin, prescriptions for antibiotics and steroids,and to bandage up the foot because it wasn't healing fast enough because the dog was licking it. Does this sound familiar? I had asked the vet if we could just bandage it in the first place. When I got home, I put a sock on her leg and taped it up high on her leg so she would not get it off. I checked and redressed the wound every 3 days, but basically kept the sock on for 2 weeks. Her ulcers scabbed up and eventually the scabs fell off. My problem with this vet is that she didn't listen to me about my dog and decided it was her way or the highway. Then when that didn't work, she didn't take responsibility for the problems that occured and charged me to fix her mistakes. While I don't think the amounts she charged were unfair for what she did, she probably shouldn't have charged me at all for everything she had to do on the 2nd visit. In fact, she should have tried the "snip it and bandage it" method first since I had told her that it had been done in the past and had always had 100% success. She couldn't have known the ulcers would have occurred, but when they did and she knew I had asked for bandaging instead of the cone, she shouldn't have charged me to undo the damage she did and then in the end do it (successfully) the way I had asked her to, to begin with. btw, I am a retired RN and know a bit about changing dressings and told her I could do it. Read Less