Oh dear, poop pup now has an open wound!

MallyGirl

hello fellow mally owner - I hope he is feeling better soon.
My insurance co did pay out for emergency vet for my cat but I did notify them as soon as I could about it

zaksmum

Agree with the above. Original vet clearly messed up on the stitching so they should definitely cover the cost of repairing the botched job.

Lieja

Do you think? I agree they messed up, especially as they checked the stitches on Saturday morning and noticed the area was reddened but sent him home anyway. I think it will be impossible to get them to agree though as they'll just say he licked/chewed them out himself. I know he didn't, but have no way of proving it.

I'm going to my vet tomorrow to have him looked at, and I think they're under the impression they're doing me a favour by not charging me for the consultation!

Had a pointless phone call with the insurance today where I got no real answer about whether they'll cover it or not so I'm just going to send a form and cross my fingers.

krlyr

I'd have thought doing the minimum amount of stitches needed reduces the risk of reaction/irritation. I had a chinchilla who had some deep layers of stitching after an emergency leg amputation, and he reacted to the stitches which formed an abcess under the skin. We had to keep him on antibiotics (to prevent blood poisoning if the abcess burst) and use compresses to encourage it to the surface - the vets were reluctant to open him up to remove it because it leaves the issue of having to stitch him back up again and risk the same thing.

I would hazard a guess that the vets usually do this one layer stitching and the majority of the time it works fine - but as OP's dog managed to open up the wound, they did the extra layers as a precaution. Or the emergency vet has a preference for the extra stitches, and the regular vet doesn't. Like some vets prefer wound glue, some prefer to avoid it, some may prefer giving one kind of pain relief, another vet a different kind and so on. Doesn't make one method wrong and the other right, just different, from different teaching/experience.

If OP does suspect her original vet of negligence, I would perhaps seek a second, non-bias veterinary opinion, and then take things further through the RCVS. But dogs can and do nibble through perfectly adequate stitching, so I wouldn't be so quick to assume the original vets were in the wrong.

Lieja

I would usually agree with you krlyr, and to an extent I do in this case - it's more the fact that he was checked on the morning and they noticed an issue but chose to do nothing about it that seems wrong, although hindsight is a great thing and I suppose redness could mean a lot of things.

It's safe to say he's a very 'boisterous' dog, and so the nurse didn't get a very close look, and just asked me to check on the wound myself to check the redness didn't spread. I'm sure to get a proper look they would have had to sedate him, so they might well have thought they were saving me money by leaving it as it was.

I don't expect they'll admit that was anything wrong with their job, and I don't expect I would gain anything by pushing it so I'm not going to. I just hope they aren't going to charge me to take the stitches out next week!

He's perfectly recovered now, and has entirely broken his lovely glittery collar trying to squeeze his head through the garden fence. He isn't remotely interested in his stitches but I'm keeping a collar on him just to be safe.

krlyr

I would expect a wound to be red though - they have essentially cut a hole in his body. If it was excessively red or swollen, hot to touch, leaking fluid/pus, etc. then fair enough, but slight redness to me would warrant keeping an eye on it but nothing further - which seems to be exactly the advice you were given.

Lieja

Oh of course I would also expect it to be red, but it was excessively so which is why they mentioned it. Before the check-up I'd just assumed that the redness was normal. It was only the nurse who looked at it though and like I say, it wasn't particularly thorough because he was getting himself worked up so she probably thought she was doing me a favour by letting us go.

But anyway, what's done is done and at least the poor lad's feeling better and seems to be back to his usual havoc-wreaking self. I'll chalk it up to experience, and ask for the super-strength stitches should he ever need any more!