What do you think of the Vets?

3v3

I have a brilliant vet and hope he's around for many, many years to come (well, for my pets lifetimes at least!).

Katiehound

I have a great vet with average charges- he was the lucky one who got phoned on Christmas day as my hound had eaten box of chocs accidentally. I think the recent booster cost was £28 and a pretty thorough examination.
I also have a vet in Ireland as we are regular trippers. Last visit was in July when I had to go haring off to vet, at his home, in pouring rain 8pm on a Sunday. :eek: My dog had a painkiller jab and antibiotic jab and it was E40, which I thought was pretty reasonable given the timimg of our visit!

I think I must be lucky having heard stories of horrendous costs

Fridaycat

bagginslover wrote: »

I'm currently up to £4000 between 2 different vets, with no diagnosis for my dog, but I don't begrudge them a penny. Both my normal vet, and the referral Center he is now with have been wonderful at keeping the costs as low as possible, even doing some things for free! He has been ill for nearly a month now, getting steadily worse. I have a back ground in biology, and so can interpret most of his test results so I know they aren't taking us for a ride-he really is a mystery case.

I hope they find out what it is soon, so your dog can be treated and on the mend.

dizziblonde

Mine seems pretty good (well I'm with two because the cat travels so badly she's at the most local one but the dogs go to one further away with much more convenient surgery times and out of hours backup etc). My mother's pets are at a vet who is the most disgraceful moneygrabber known - just adds on so much extra stuff it's nuts, whereas ours will offer us options, advise us what to try that's cheapest first and even on occasion tell us to go online to get X or Y as it's cheaper than they sell it for. Counts for a lot does that.

irishsymphony

I think it depend.

Many of the vets here seem to be quite "old school" - from their surgeries, to their examination techniques.

Whereas when speaking with friends in America, it seems they have all the latest modcons and machinery for checking just about anything and everything to do with animals.

I have to say, although I feel quite loyal to the vet we've used for years, it does seem like many of his techniques are becoming outdated - or perhaps that he himself has become somewhat indifferent to the animals' needs when examining, and that the younger newly-qualified vets are more in tune with it. Not sure on that one.

Money - is crazy though, seriously crazy to be bringing pets to the vet at the moment, you would definitely want insurance nowadays it seems, whereas we never had our lot insured (probably why the dog ended up costing a fortune in fees!)

trudiha

Considering that my dog won't talk and doesn't even have to good grace to point to where the problem is, I'm always pretty impressed when the vet manages to work out what's wrong with him. I don't find it in the least surprising that it can sometimes take a couple of tries. I don't think that my GP would be any more accurate if I strolled into his surgery looking glum and refusing to discuss the problem.

DebiT

trudiha wrote: »

Considering that my dog won't talk and doesn't even have to good grace to point to where the problem is, I'm always pretty impressed when the vet manages to work out what's wrong with him. I don't find it in the least surprising that it can sometimes take a couple of tries. I don't think that my GP would be any more accurate if I strolled into his surgery looking glum and refusing to discuss the problem.

Pets dont have to talk though do they? We take them to the vets because we have obviously noticed a problem, we speak on their behalf, we point out the problem to the vet, they just have to take a look and give us a diagnosis. That is after all why they spent years at vet school.

After taking my cat to the vet about half a dozen times and being misdiagnosed half a dozen times, from ringworm to an antibacterial infection (none of which he had), I finally went online and found out the problem and cure myself. Whe the vet finally sent me their extortionate bill, I told them I would not be paying for their mistakes. They apologised and sent me an invoice purely for the medication I had requested.

But obviously if youre happy with the service you have had from your vet, that is great.:)

3v3

DebiT wrote: »

...
Considering how expensive they are, I think their diagnosis should be more accurate....

In comparision to what?

I think, if we compared vetenary prices with, for example, human charges we may not consider it "expensive". One of the things we take for granted with our NHS is that we get a "free" service; but that can cloud our judgement on the actual costs involved.

As an example I looked up how much private GP services cost with BUPA:

GP appointments are £65 for 15 minutes. (Source)

DebiT

3v3 wrote: »

In comparision to what?

In comparison to the actual price of the medication involved. Here is just one small example:http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1705235/Vets-can-overcharge-500-for-medicines.html

bugslet

I've had great service and great diagnosis from my vets and never once in about 20 years and about a dozen dogs in that time, felt that they haven't offered good advice. My most ill dog - haemangio sarcoma - they laid out a range of treatment options but gave the advice that both operating and chemo would not do more than extend his life by about 3 months and with an operation, it would probably detract from his quality of life in 3 months; the advice was to make him comfortable, though the choice was mine. They could certainly have made more money by pushing some of the other options.

I think if you feel that you aren't getting great service from your vets, then it's time to find another. Mine, BTW are not the cheapest per consultation/procedure, but I do feel that they give good value for money.