My Dog’s Woes Just Made A Vet’s Ferrari Payment!

Do you know what pet sedatives are?

Well, my best friend Bailey found a whole bottle of them on Friday while we were both at work, and had to be taken in for emergency care! What a start to a great weekend, right? Wrong! First off, I’d do anything for him so I wasn’t too fazed when the vet said that he needed to run some test and possibly keep him overnight (I was guessing $300, and this guess didn’t sound too bad)! Secondly, all the regular vets in the area closed shop for the weekend, so I was left with no other options anyway. Now here comes the hardest part to swallow: third, our itemized estimate had a total of $1400 at the bottom of it! Man, I almost flipped my lid right there!

The vet helper (sorry, I don’t know her real title, and didn’t care to due to the fact that she had like no personality to speak of) said everything on that list was absolutely necessary, and I didn’t have pet insurance (it always sounded like a crock of bologna to me. I still believe this, by the way) so my hands were tied — I was forced to pay this huge bill, because of the love that I have for this big dingbat with fur. However, I didn’t do it quietly!

The next day I did a ton of research, and this is some of the stuff that I found out about vet clinics (a day late and a dollar short, if you ask me):

The American Animal Hospital Association has been advising vets to impose a $5-per-customer fee increase to raise $50,000 of mostly pure profit. The group also recommends more screenings and lab tests (where markups run from 210 to 720 percent), more X-rays ($37 to $140), and more ultrasounds ($71 to $338). These guys are jerk offs, IMHO!

Vet charges are influenced by how much college loans the vet has to pay off, how new the vet’s fancy office is, and whether the office, which vets often falsely call an “animal hospital”, is located in a high-rent part of town. Also, emergency hospitals that stay open all night charge way more, so try to keep your pet out of trouble after 5 p.m. and on weekends (I wish I would have known this fact on Friday).

At the same time, so-called “great” leaps in veterinary medicine are making expensive treatment options a reality. Dogs with potentially fatal cardiac problems routinely get a $3,000 pacemaker, and cats suffering renal failure can have an $8,000 kidney transplant. Veterinary drugs treat everything from separation anxiety and arthritis pain to epilepsy and cancer for $0.66 to $16 a day–often for the life of the pet. This is horse crap!

Even if your pet is perfectly healthy, vets are now ready with a battery of tests, shots, and even X-rays for the annual wellness checkup, costing up to $140 for kittens and puppies and as much as $340 for older cats and dogs. Seems like the days of reasonably-priced pet care are gone!

Do these vets not get it … do they not see that their over-inflated prices and high-profit treatment options are posing huge new dilemmas for owners of this nation’s 143 million cats and canines (not to mention the million of birds, reptiles, and other pets)? How is the middle-class going to be able to afford the high cost of 21st-century veterinary care? And when can we say “NO” to unnecessary treatments with a clear conscience? This is totally not fair to any pet owner, and something must be done (I hope Obama’s team can find a way to take care of this crime, for the love of my pet)!

Before I get out of here, I found a few ways to help you save thousands of dollars on veterinary care by planning and shopping carefully (of which I did neither, and now regret):

You don’t always have to buy your prescription drugs from vets! Over 600 drugs used to treat pets are actually human drugs, and you can find some of the best deals at your local drugstores (note: always research before buying though, just to be on the safe side).

Pet insurance won’t necessarily save you money. In fact, with it, you can sometimes end up paying far more for veterinary care than if you didn’t have the insurance (look it up if you don’t believe me).

The demand for purebred dogs has made costly genetic diseases more widespread. This is a well known fact (of which, I didn’t know). What kind of breed is the hardiest, you ask? Well, it turns out that the answer is the common mutt (just like Bailey).

If it sounds like a rip-off, then get a second opinion! Why? Well, the small amount spent on a second opinion may be the best money you ever spend — especially if your vet doesn’t seem to have nailed down the diagnosis and your pet isn’t responding well to the treatments.

Well, I had to learn a valuable lesson this weekend, and I think that I’m the better for it now! You see, I wrongfully thought that veterinarians actually placed helping out pets above turning a profit, but boy was I wrong. I guess wherever there’s a way to make money from someone’s (or some pet’s) sorrows, there’s going to be some greedy jerk-off with the will enough to stretch out their palms and take it away!

To Bailey: I still love you buddy, and I’m not mad at you (any longer that is. LOL). Now, to that thieving vet: you’re in the wrong business pal (try one that likes to rob people blind. I heard that bankers turn a hefty profit — try there)!