Greedy Vets. Emotional Blackmail.

Nellie you have missed out one of the other possibilities, i.e. they were "purrrrfectly" normal until they came to live with us! I would, of course, refute that.

Maurice is the only one that we have had from a kitten, and apart from having above average intelligence, he seems a pretty normal well balanced chap.

I think that nurse needed a hard "I beg your pardon?" snooty stare, merlot. Glad your pet is fine.

Yes joannap that reminds me when I took back our budgerigar when the girls were small. Saying goodbye to him had been so painful, and he kept landing on the floor, he had no strength left to fly.
The vet said straightaway she would administer a Vitamin Booster Injection.
He was already old so I just dumped him, cage and all and left.
I never intended to have another bird and the children soon got over him.

I like old fashioned 'Herriot' vets and was sorry when mine retired. Since then the bills have increased but our tom is over 17 now, painfully thin and also retired from any sort of outside life.
The next drive to the vet will be the last, but we put off thinking about that too much.

phoenix you seem to run a "funny farm" for cats. Do they seek you out or do you collect them?

Glad all's well with her merlot

Charleygirl You are right in some ways, but I think the day we start really understanding her and all her little peccadilloes will be the day we qualify for the nice comfy room with the quilted lining!

Just as we get used to one behaviour trait, for example "Lily likes to spend most of her time inside the folded sofa bed in the spare room" and make allowances for that i.e. appearing to talk to an invisible cat whenever going into the room to put the laundry on the clothes horse, it changes to "Lily likes to spend most of her time half way up the stairs with her head through the bannisters", which means we have both developed the habit of sort of walking sideways along the hall.

No doubt any day now she will change her preferred position, we will still be walking sideways and talking to cats that aren't there and people will think we are odd.

So pleased to hear she is home soon,gosh £150.00 would buy her a cashmere blanket & all the trimmings.

What annoys me is that they assumed I couldn't pay the extra which isn't the case. The vet nurse waited until Peggy had had the pre-op checks and I was about to sign the form and then tried to wangle more dosh. I didn't come up on the down train but I can imagine some owners would be happy to cough up if they were upset about a pet having to have an operation.

I've just rung and she's absolutely fine and I can pick her up at 4.30pm. So glad I'm not £150 out of pocket.

Phoenix that poor maligned animal. She is definitely not understood in your household!

When I thought I would have to have Lily put down just before Christmas I rang our vets and explained our financial crisis. he said that we both (i.e. him and I ) have a duty of care with regard to any welfare issues, and he would do what needed to be done and we could then work out how we were going to pay.

In the end Lily has lived to see a fair few more days, although if she if she keeps on launching herself at me through the bannisters I might think again.

She'll be fine merlot and I bet she will love her new bedding we paid for Barney our little JR to be done before we brought him home from the rescue centre and they added £60.00 to the cost of our donation to the centre there are quite a few vets in our area who offer 1/2 price spaying every so often in our area which does help a lot of pet owners,hoping she is not in too much discomfort when she comes home & is soon back to normal.

I wouldn't be surprised if the vet nurses are on bonuses for flogging extra treatments.

I have to ring at 2.30 to find out when I can collect her. Instead of paying for a blood test I've bought her a new comfy liner for her bed.

Soft, moi?

That really is emotional blackmail - the kind of horror story that gets all vets a bad name.
Will you move vets now? We have a non for profit vets opened up locally. it's run by a group of young vets, with one older vet who is determined to make a success of it. It is getting a really good rep, and my neighbour's dog who was run over (those damn squirrels, again) was in their hospital for 3 nights, had surgery on a fractured leg plus internal stuff. The fee was around £350 - stunning really.
I've stayed with our vets, who don't put pressure on for nonsense, and are just great with my collection of dogs. They have also spayed foster dogs, and done their imms etc at half price, to support the charity re-homing the dogs.

Last week our GC's hamster was obviously not long for this world and destined for the big wheel in the sky. Our son took Harry to the vet, who promptly said "We must try to revive him", and put him in an oxygen tent! DS could see the poor little thing was struggling so suggested that the kindest thing was to put him down, which the vet eventually did.
She then charged £50 for treatment(!) and euthanasia.

..there's a thought; wouldn't standard insurance cover the dog for any complications due to the spaying even though it wouldn't cover the basic operation itself?

PS to spey a small dog was about £35 back then

Surely if you had the bog standard treatment and something went wrong they wouldn't just let the dog die? Maybe things like that have happened and people have refused to pay the extra?? Why would she need a blood test? Last years thing with the vets was wanting to put her under anaesthetic to clean her teeth which I refused and bought her some of those chewy things instead. To be fair she has another lump which neither I nor the vet are too concerned about and the vet gave me a complete breakdown on what it would cost to removed and biopsy, and that only came to £500. £300 for a spay operation is ridiculous. Still can't decide whether to go ahead with the op but my insurance is only a year one so afte September it won't be covered.

That's disgraceful!
I was a vet nurse for ten years before having my children. Admittedly this was 27yrs ago. But there is no way we practiced like that.
I think saying 'if you can't afford it' is down right rude. I would have to have said something. She has no idea of your finances and it doesn't always come down to that anyway.