Been here too many times already this year, and it certainly isn't cheap. But emergency medical care isn't cheap for person or animal.Positives:- Available 24hr- Knowledge and skill (operative)- Pati... Read More
Been here too many times already this year, and it certainly isn't cheap. But emergency medical care isn't cheap for person or animal.Positives:- Available 24hr- Knowledge and skill (operative)- Patience and willingness to field 100 questions in the middle of the night- Understanding of different levels of willingness to pay for care. There is nothing wrong with offering the range of treatments and letting you decide what you want for your pet. - Good communication, follow-up, and responsiveness over the phone- Coordination when you're away (such as when your pet makes a visit from a kennel)- Overnight observation option- Up front cost estimates - you will know the price range (which is wide, but accurate) before you sign and get startedNegative:- Cost. Though when we compared bills for similar care at the general, by-appt vet and emergency care provided at 10pm on a weekend night, they were pretty similar. Some items are slightly more or less at each place, but AVC has a greater range of services they're able to offer and can do overnight observation of your pet. Stories (in case you're interested):1. January 2016. Hayden finds and eats a bunch of chocolate (wrappers and all), but we won't know that for 2 more days because she was sneaky and left all the trash outside in the middle of winter (brrr... who goes outside then?!). We get home and have no idea what's wrong with her, but she's not acting right. Stumbling, not wagging tail, barely can lift her head off the couch. Off to AVC. They examine her, labs, and abdominal xray. Enlarged spleen, but not exactly sure why. They'll keep her and watch her closely overnight, give some fluid. Phone call the next day - she's no better, recommend operating. Go over all the costs. No pressure, they understand she's almost 11 yo and might not recover well. We decide to go ahead - she was just jumping and swimming at Barley's 2 days ago; this must be something acute and fixable (our hopeful belief). Her stomach is bloated from a partial obstruction from the wrappers, and this caused her spleen to swell and twist off its own blood supply. Splenectomy and gastrostomy to remove the obstruction. Several more days at AVC and a very long week of recovery at home. She's back to jumping into the pool at Barley's less than a month after surgery. 2. April 2016. Blood drops on the kitchen floor in the morning. She's dripping from her mouth, but can't tell where. Otherwise she's doing fine so we decide to watch it. A few hours later and still going, but she's acting normal so we go to the regular vet. They keep her all the rest of the day, get labs, and sedate her at 5pm to look in her mouth. Small pinprick area, they try to cauterize with silver nitrate and it seems to stop. Labs are abnormal - coagulation factors are off, probably got into rat poison or something similar. She comes home. A few hours later more blood. More than before. She's still acting fine, but the Vitamin K will take several days to correct her coagulation factors. It's 9pm, so off to AVC. They recommend plasma to quickly correct her coagulation factors and correct the bleeding. No pressure, but with factors that low, she's at risk for spontaneous bleeds elsewhere. It wasn't pushed, this was our understanding based on our own experiences in medicine. They'll need to keep her overnight to do this. In the morning her factors are normal, no more bleeding, and she comes home. When we had a minor scare 2 days later at the Utah Dog Park the vet and techs at AVC worked with us over the phone to do a quick check up. A small positive to note: their Vitamin K prescription was cheaper and had more tabs (the total amount actually needed for the prescribed duration) than the Rx provided by her normal vet (the one she saw first). She's still jumping into the pool at Barley's. Read Less