Re: OT: My Dog :(

Posted by Matt from CT on May 18, 2006 at 17:34:41 from (68.118.199.56):

In Reply to: OT: My Dog :( posted by Brad Wright of MO on May 18, 2006 at 13:32:36:

It's tough no doubt, and talking even if it's just online helps sometimes.

I have a pretty reasonably priced vet (though her prices seem to go up faster than inflation...).

Still, I've had a couple times I've spent approaching that for what sounds like it was simpler surgery (one of my dogs form stones...he just couldn't pee...finally we had to bypass Mr. Winky). Fortunately, I was earning a good income, although I hadn't built up savings at the time from trying to pay off old debts and I was scrambling to scrape up the funds...$400 from that account, $200 on this credit card type of thing.

Check with other vets, especially if you can find a "country" vet -- some of the prices I hear from "city" vets people on a Dalmatian board I visit go to are crazy. Although $900 for internal surgery, figuring a week or so recovery @ vets, doesn't sound that out of line.

I also considered the long term prospects. With Jake, he was (and is) a very active, healthy dog. The surgeries where simple and fixed the issue -- it wasn't like "this will stabilize but then all this stuff will still be wrong..."

I've also had Lexie, who went lame. Just lost control of her hindquarters. She wasn't super old (8 or 10...), but not a spring chicken and she hadn't been "thriving" for a while -- just acted much older than her age. She was a sweetheart. I was ready to put her down, but the vet wanted to give her several days at her office but she didn't improve with drug treatments. I wasn't going to spend the money to take her to Tuft's vet school for a more sophisticated work-up, etc and we put her to sleep -- I just couldn't see her having that high of a quality of life, or living that much longer anyway, compared to what it would cost.

Saw someone talking about bringing their 10 year old dog to a veterinary oncologist the other day...I just couldn't imagine treating any dog never mind a senior for cancer -- either the drugs or the surgery or whatever has got to be hard on them, expensive, and they're not going to live that much longer anyway.

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