How much do Vets really make?

[MassDVMMPH]

Some states support their vet schools quite a bit - mostly states with a lot of agricultural business. They understand how important vets are to the success of animal agriculture and also to public health. And it might surprise you to know that many vets agree that spending tens of thousands of dollars to extend one animal's life (for instance, there's a vet school that offers bone marrow transplants to dogs now) makes no real sense when you realize how many millions of animals, that are just as wonderful as that one, are being systematically euthanized in the prime of their lives all across this country. Just think of how many lives that money could save if it was redirected. There is definitely a disconnect between the ivory towers of vet med and the vets on the ground, so to speak. My employer contracts with local shelters to do their humane euthanasias, so I've seen these wonderful creatures up close and personal. I adopted one of them myself, but you can't save them all. When I hear about someone spending tens of thousands to extend their dog's life by a matter of months, I understand their motivation, but I also see the eyes of these dogs who will never have a chance to be loved and given treats and taken on long walks. I just think it would be better in a lot of cases if people let go a bit earlier than a lot of them are encouraged to do, and used that money to give another creature a chance at knowing some happiness.

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[JaynaAli]

WTF? Shouldn't you guys be getting paid more?

Or you know...it's a pet...look i love my dog and all and would definitely cry when she passes away but I would never pay thousands of dollars on her

You ask why we aren't paid more, and then you demonstrated a reason why we don't.

 

[StartingoverVet]

Or you know...it's a pet...look i love my dog and all and would definitely cry when she passes away but I would never pay thousands of dollars on her when clearly there are homeless families in the street and people who go years without treatment for debilitating diseases (elderly people cutting pills in half). I'm talking about random people who I'm less emotionally attached to than my dog but geez they're human. Something is inherently wrong with your value system if an animal's life is worth more than a human's. There you go. I bet I just rattled some cages by posting this. You won't see states subsidizing vet school tuition anytime soon because these values are shared by the vast majority of people.

Okay. I'll stop bothering your forums now. I was only posting for the past day because my sibling was interested in vet school.

Well, your ignorance is pretty obvious here.
1) Many states do subsidize vet school tuition. That is why going in-state is such a huge advantage.
2) Many people are more emotionally attached to pets than the people or their family because the love is less complicated. Go talk to a psychiatrist about that one. It is quite a fact.
3) People are spending thousands on their pets now. Most of them? I don't know the numbers, but it is not an insignificant number. Pets are in a majority of homes and are increasingly viewed as family members. Many poor (and middle income and rich)people will spend all they have to help a pet
4) the "starving people in Africa" argument (or homeless or whatever) has never been a particularly impactful argument. I left over that food I didn't like no matter how many times my mother said that. You can't mandate what other people should feel.

Generally this whole post just seems ignorant of what pets mean to most people. You clearly have a different value system. Good for you. Now STFU.

 

[sgv]

Well, your ignorance is pretty obvious here.
1) Many states do subsidize vet school tuition. That is why going in-state is such a huge advantage.
2) Many people are more emotionally attached to pets than the people or their family because the love is less complicated. Go talk to a psychiatrist about that one. It is quite a fact.
3) People are spending thousands on their pets now. Most of them? I don't know the numbers, but it is not an insignificant number. Pets are in a majority of homes and are increasingly viewed as family members. Many poor (and middle income and rich)people will spend all they have to help a pet
4) the "starving people in Africa" argument (or homeless or whatever) has never been a particularly impactful argument. I left over that food I didn't like no matter how many times my mother said that. You can't mandate what other people should feel.

Generally this whole post just seems ignorant of what pets mean to most people. You clearly have a different value system. Good for you. Now STFU.

Sorry. I realize that I basically just walked into your home and told your entire family that they're poor, asked why they're poor, argued why they should be poor, and then say their values are invalid. My bad.

 

[TooLove]

Sorry. I realize that I basically just walked into your home and told your entire family that they're poor, asked why they're poor, argued why they should be poor, and then say their values are invalid. My bad.

Drop the snarkiness. You came here looking for information, and got some from people who were more than willing to inform your close-minded little self. You knowingly made controversial statements and admitted you expected to ruffle a few feathers - which is fine, but don't do it if you can't handle the ensuing debate without acting like a child.

 

[Thelemic]

Drop the snarkiness. You came here looking for information, and got some from people who were more than willing to inform your close-minded little self. You knowingly made controversial statements and admitted you expected to ruffle a few feathers - which is fine, but don't do it if you can't handle the ensuing debate without acting like a child.

I'm actually starting to think sgv just came here to troll.

 

[sgv]

Drop the snarkiness. You came here looking for information, and got some from people who were more than willing to inform your close-minded little self. You knowingly made controversial statements and admitted you expected to ruffle a few feathers - which is fine, but don't do it if you can't handle the ensuing debate without acting like a child.

Sorry. You guys were very nice about answering my questions. I shouldn't have said some of things that I said before not only because they were wrong but they were nonconstructive. I'm also sorry that my first apology was snarky. I was trying to humorous and it wasn't.

 

[BlackDog17]

I think this is a circumstance where its more black and white then grey. I don't think you can justify doing a C-section on a dog with no postoperative analgesia because you're concerned the client is going to do it at home on their kitchen table. If you're going to take on the responsibility of doing surgery on a patient, you have the ethical responsibility to make sure its appropriately analgesed. If that means you have to give away some metacam or some tramadol, then so be it. Its totally unacceptable to do something painful to a patient and then make them 'suffer through it' post-operatively because the client declines pain control, and you can't financially justify giving the meds away for free. If thats the case, you shouldn't have agreed to do the procedure.

Don't get me wrong - i'm not advocating veterinarians give away their services for free... I'm simply saying that if you take on the responsibility of doing surgery for a fiscally constrained client, you cannot justify cutting costs by cutting out the analgesics. If you're going to cut costs - cut your professional fee.

I don't think you understand how much it actually costs to keep a vet clinic up and running. Or how much disdain most people have for the cost of veterinary care. You also seem to be missing this:

If you're making $60,000/year with >$120,000 in student loans, not accounting for the loan required to buy a practice, that's about $1,200/month in student loans for 10 years? $7,500 in income tax. $2,900 in state tax. You take home $35,200? WTF? Dental hygienists with only two years of education after college and little student loans get paid more than vet's? WTF? You're doctors! Shouldn't you guys be getting paid more? You'd have to really like handling animals to invest this much into your career with little compensation.

It's not as simple as "just lower your fees" and that's a very naive way of looking at things. Some vets have the luxury of being able to turn away business when they don't agree with the client's priorities. Most don't. The majority of clients who walk through your door are going to be unhappy with your prices, and with the way the economy has gone in recent years there will be many who genuinely can't afford the best care for their pet. With your "give it to them for free or turn them away at the door" policy, you will go bankrupt within your first month of practice. You have to be willing to work within your client's financial constraints. It is a major part of veterinary practice.

Let's say a client comes into the clinic and her dog is dying. Treatment A is 99% effective, works quickly, and will save that dog's life. Treatment B is generally not recommended as it's only 35% effective, takes many weeks to work meaning that the dog will be ill much longer, and in the end the dog may die anyway. Client refuses euthanasia, says she cannot afford treatment A. You know that Treatment B is substandard. This is the reality of veterinary practice. By your logic, we should turn that client away at the door because we shouldn't take on the responsibility of treatment if we can't provide the best situation possible. Personally, I'd rather provide some treatment than none.

And again there is no one standard that applies to every situation. There are some circumstances and procedures where I would absolutely not proceed unless the client agreed to everything on the estimate. But you can bet that if I have any reason to suspect that dog will be in danger, I will be doing everything in my power to make sure that animal doesn't leave without treatment. You can only play the "not in my clinic, not my problem" game for so long before it becomes outright negligence.

 

[BlackDog17]

Or you know...it's a pet...look i love my dog and all and would definitely cry when she passes away but I would never pay thousands of dollars on her when clearly there are homeless families in the street and people who go years without treatment for debilitating diseases (elderly people cutting pills in half). I'm talking about random people who I'm less emotionally attached to than my dog but geez they're human. Something is inherently wrong with your value system if an animal's life is worth more than a human's. There you go. I bet I just rattled some cages by posting this. You won't see states subsidizing vet school tuition anytime soon because these values are shared by the vast majority of people.

Okay. I'll stop bothering your forums now. I was only posting for the past day because my sibling was interested in vet school.

So every time you get a hefty estimate from your vet, you euthanize your dog and go donate a couple thousand to charity? I find that hard to believe. More likely, you go spend it on a new tv or your next vacation. Your holier-than-thou attitude is incredibly misplaced, and definitely not shared by "the vast majority of people".

 

[deleted498041]

3) People are spending thousands on their pets now. Most of them? I don't know the numbers, but it is not an insignificant number. Pets are in a majority of homes and are increasingly viewed as family members. Many poor (and middle income and rich)people will spend all they have to help a pet

Just wanted to chime in to help prove your point. I have four horses, so I definitely rack up some bills, but that's kind of to be expected. I think SGV was referring to dogs and cats as what people couldn't possible spend thousands on. I have an 8 year old black mouth cur/lab x so I'm sure her development of hip dysplasia came as no surprise to anyone. By the time she was three, we'd spent $5000 for her hip replacement surgery and that didn't include the many radiographs she'd had prior to that. A year later, another $5000 for the second hip. I am one of those people that will spend thousands on my animals, and I know a lot of other people that are in the same boat.

 

[NStarz]

I have mixed feelings about insurance. On the one hand, it will allow people to spend more for their animals and not have to make hasty, economy-driven decisions when presented with a large estimate (especially in emergency situations). On the other hand, I really don't want insurance companies dictating how I practice medicine. We're not there yet, but it's a possibility.

 

[JM313]

Or you know...it's a pet...look i love my dog and all and would definitely cry when she passes away but I would never pay thousands of dollars on her when clearly there are homeless families in the street and people who go years without treatment for debilitating diseases (elderly people cutting pills in half). I'm talking about random people who I'm less emotionally attached to than my dog but geez they're human. Something is inherently wrong with your value system if an animal's life is worth more than a human's. There you go. I bet I just rattled some cages by posting this. You won't see states subsidizing vet school tuition anytime soon because these values are shared by the vast majority of people.

Okay. I'll stop bothering your forums now. I was only posting for the past day because my sibling was interested in vet school.

Since you seem to have no respect for our profession. I just wanted to inform you that states do subsidize vet school tuition because veterinarians are very important not just in caring for family pets but in research, disease control and public health. A veterinarian was the the first person to demonstrate that an insect could transmit disease which directly contributed to the discovery that mosquitoes transmitted malaria (there you go we helped the sick people in Africa). A veterinarian was the first to discover graft vs. host disease. A veterinarian was the first to identify West Nile Virus in North America. I could go on and on. Veterinarians are extremely important in many areas of health and have actually done a lot to help humans. You seem to think we only help animals, but veterinarians are a lot more important than you know and advances/discoveries in veterinary medicine have actually been the starting points for a lot of major advances in human medicine. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK37843/ , Please read this article, so that maybe next time you feel like coming to our thread and telling us there is something inherently wrong with our values you have a little more information.

Animals and humans live together, in order for us all to be healthy we have to support the health of both. Veterinarians help to keep livestock and family pets healthy so that they are not transmitting diseases to humans. There are also many service animals that drastically improve the quality of life for humans with debilitating diseases and we as veterinarians can keep these service animals up and running so they can do their jobs. There wouldn't be as much research in veterinary medicine if there weren't owners willing to pay thousands for their pets, so you can thank these people for some of the major advances in human medicine. Currently researchers have discovered that a peptide of the Feline Immunodeficiency Virus activates patients' t-cells to kill HIV, which may lead to help for a vaccine. Guess who one of the main researchers involved was, a vet school professor. http://jvi.asm.org/content/87/18/10004.full

Let's say your dog eats something it shouldn't and it gets stuck in the intestine or stomach? Now she is sick and needs to have it removed, this typically costs $1500-2000 and your dog will be cured. But you would say, nah doc just put her down, I'll just go give this money to the homeless guy on the corner, or the elderly couple that can't afford their medications. According to your values that is what you should do, but is that what you would really do? Or would you just spend the money on something else? Or when it came down to it and you saw your dog suffering and had the choice to cure her or end her life early would you realize that your values are also "inherently wrong"?

 

[dvm'08]

I don't think you understand how much it actually costs to keep a vet clinic up and running. Or how much disdain most people have for the cost of veterinary care. You also seem to be missing this:



It's not as simple as "just lower your fees" and that's a very naive way of looking at things. Some vets have the luxury of being able to turn away business when they don't agree with the client's priorities. Most don't. The majority of clients who walk through your door are going to be unhappy with your prices, and with the way the economy has gone in recent years there will be many who genuinely can't afford the best care for their pet. With your "give it to them for free or turn them away at the door" policy, you will go bankrupt within your first month of practice. You have to be willing to work within your client's financial constraints. It is a major part of veterinary practice.

Let's say a client comes into the clinic and her dog is dying. Treatment A is 99% effective, works quickly, and will save that dog's life. Treatment B is generally not recommended as it's only 35% effective, takes many weeks to work meaning that the dog will be ill much longer, and in the end the dog may die anyway. Client refuses euthanasia, says she cannot afford treatment A. You know that Treatment B is substandard. This is the reality of veterinary practice. By your logic, we should turn that client away at the door because we shouldn't take on the responsibility of treatment if we can't provide the best situation possible. Personally, I'd rather provide some treatment than none.

And again there is no one standard that applies to every situation. There are some circumstances and procedures where I would absolutely not proceed unless the client agreed to everything on the estimate. But you can bet that if I have any reason to suspect that dog will be in danger, I will be doing everything in my power to make sure that animal doesn't leave without treatment. You can only play the "not in my clinic, not my problem" game for so long before it becomes outright negligence.

I've been a vet for a lot longer then you've been a vet student... so I think I have a pretty good idea about practicing veterinary medicine in the trench, and about how a veterinary clinic runs.

There is a huge difference between choosing "choice B" (which may be substandard), and wilfully allowing an animal to suffer as a result of your intervention. There is absolutely no circumstance where it is acceptable to withhold pain medications from a patient after you have chosen to intervene on the patient's behalf.

I think virtually every veterinarian has to come up with 'plan B' to fit a clients budget. The issue becomes when some veterinarians choose to keep clients happy while completely compromising their standard of care.

I was involved in a disciplinary case where a veterinarian elected to treat a dog for a client who was severely financially constrained... the vet thought they were doing a good deed by treating the dog 'on the cheap' (i.e.: providing some care, rather then no care). The patient ended up have a complication and came into our ER... although I understood why the vet did what she did, her actions ended up in the eyes of the VMA as malpractice. My point being the standard of care is just that - the standard of care. When you fail to meet the 'minimum' standard of care you put your licence in jeopardy.

 

[BlackDog17]

I've been a vet for a lot longer then you've been a vet student... so I think I have a pretty good idea about practicing veterinary medicine in the trench, and about how a veterinary clinic runs.

There is a huge difference between choosing "choice B" (which may be substandard), and wilfully allowing an animal to suffer as a result of your intervention. There is absolutely no circumstance where it is acceptable to withhold pain medications from a patient after you have chosen to intervene on the patient's behalf.

I think virtually every veterinarian has to come up with 'plan B' to fit a clients budget. The issue becomes when some veterinarians choose to keep clients happy while completely compromising their standard of care.

I was involved in a disciplinary case where a veterinarian elected to treat a dog for a client who was severely financially constrained... the vet thought they were doing a good deed by treating the dog 'on the cheap' (i.e.: providing some care, rather then no care). The patient ended up have a complication and came into our ER... although I understood why the vet did what she did, her actions ended up in the eyes of the VMA as malpractice. My point being the standard of care is just that - the standard of care. When you fail to meet the 'minimum' standard of care you put your licence in jeopardy.

You aren't understanding what I'm saying.

Again, not every situation is the same. (how many times have I said this now?) Are there situations where compromising care for the sake of cost can end horribly for your patient? Absolutely! And as I've already said several times, there are situations in which I would more willingly let the client walk out than agree to cut certain aspects of care. But if it's a matter of the animal being uncomfortable for a day or two, but ultimately being fine, versus suffering a slow and painful death when an untrained owner attempts to perform the procedure himself? I would much rather put that animal through a significantly less traumatic experience in a controlled environment. It's very similar to the convenience euthanasia argument. I don't believe euthanasia is a good or acceptable outcome for any healthy animal. I never want to perform a convenience euthanasia. But if I have a client who is going to kill the animal himself if I don't do it, I will most certainly perform that euthanasia myself.

You seem to have this idea that you can draw up a standard operating procedure for any given situation and slap an "ethically wrong" label on anything that deviates from it. That's not the way it works. Any ethics debate is shades of grey, and what's ethical for one person is not necessarily going to be ethical for another. I won't give away care for free, nor would I consider myself ethically free of responsibility in every situation by refusing care. My sense of ethics and what's best for my patients may be different than yours, but that does not make them wrong, and vice versa.

 

[2CatMatt]

You aren't understanding what I'm saying.

Again, not every situation is the same. (how many times have I said this now?) Are there situations where compromising care for the sake of cost can end horribly for your patient? Absolutely! And as I've already said several times, there are situations in which I would more willingly let the client walk out than agree to cut certain aspects of care. But if it's a matter of the animal being uncomfortable for a day or two, but ultimately being fine, versus suffering a slow and painful death when an untrained owner attempts to perform the procedure himself? I would much rather put that animal through a significantly less traumatic experience in a controlled environment. It's very similar to the convenience euthanasia argument. I don't believe euthanasia is a good or acceptable outcome for any healthy animal. I never want to perform a convenience euthanasia. But if I have a client who is going to kill the animal himself if I don't do it, I will most certainly perform that euthanasia myself.

You seem to have this idea that you can draw up a standard operating procedure for any given situation and slap an "ethically wrong" label on anything that deviates from it. That's not the way it works. Any ethics debate is shades of grey, and what's ethical for one person is not necessarily going to be ethical for another. I won't give away care for free, nor would I consider myself ethically free of responsibility in every situation by refusing care. My sense of ethics and what's best for my patients may be different than yours, but that does not make them wrong, and vice versa.

We've been having discussions on convenience euthanasia, pain med, etc recently and this same argument has been proffered as a reason why some vets may choose to make those decisions. I'm having trouble grasping the logic though. And this is in no way an attack on you personally, I am honestly trying to understand these difficult situations before I get out into practice and come to terms with this since we will all most certainly have to make similar tough decisions related to this in our careers.

About people having different ethics and it being shades of gray, aren't there shared professional ethics that we all subscribe to as veterinarians? How is something like convenience euthanasia not against those shared ethics? The argument that the owner will just go kill the animal themselves seems like a logical fallacy to me. If our morals tell us that euthanizing a healthy animal for a non-medical reason is wrong, then the right thing to do is not euthanize the animal, even if the killing of that animal may happen anyway. It seems to me that our responsibility is instead to inform the owner why it would be wrong, why it would be painful if they tried to do it on their own, and to offer alternatives. Or in the case of post-op pain meds, if we as a profession decide we're ethically obliged to minimize pain and standards of care call for using post-op meds, then that is how we should practice. Again, being scared we would lose the client is an unconvincing, hollow argument that makes a lot of assumptions that may or may not occur. Do I abandon my convictions or my professional obligations simply to minimize the risk of losing a client - and a low-paying client at that?

 

[Thelemic]

We've been having discussions on convenience euthanasia, pain med, etc recently and this same argument has been proffered as a reason why some vets may choose to make those decisions. I'm having trouble grasping the logic though. And this is in no way an attack on you personally, I am honestly trying to understand these difficult situations before I get out into practice and come to terms with this since we will all most certainly have to make similar tough decisions related to this in our careers.

About people having different ethics and it being shades of gray, aren't there shared professional ethics that we all subscribe to as veterinarians? How is something like convenience euthanasia not against those shared ethics? The argument that the owner will just go kill the animal themselves seems like a logical fallacy to me. If our morals tell us that euthanizing a healthy animal for a non-medical reason is wrong, then the right thing to do is not euthanize the animal, even if the killing of that animal may happen anyway. It seems to me that our responsibility is instead to inform the owner why it would be wrong, why it would be painful if they tried to do it on their own, and to offer alternatives. Or in the case of post-op pain meds, if we as a profession decide we're ethically obliged to minimize pain and standards of care call for using post-op meds, then that is how we should practice. Again, being scared we would lose the client is an unconvincing, hollow argument that makes a lot of assumptions that may or may not occur. Do I abandon my convictions or my professional obligations simply to minimize the risk of losing a client - and a low-paying client at that?

I also have difficulty with the argument of 'if this person is given compromised service instead of fully denied service, it stops them from going home and killing/'operating' on the animal in their own home'. I feel like, in some respects, this is rewarding the most atrocious of behaviors. It's like the more awful and unethical a client is as a person, the more we, as ethical vets, are then obliged to bend over backwards to help them.

 

[nyanko]

I'm sorry but I'm not going to let the type of manipulative jerk who would say that he is just going to kill the dog at home himself (and someone who says this to you is indeed trying to manipulate you by appealing to your emotions, regardless of whether they will or won't actually follow through) dictate my actions and cause me to compromise my ethical standards.

 

[BlackDog17]

We've been having discussions on convenience euthanasia, pain med, etc recently and this same argument has been proffered as a reason why some vets may choose to make those decisions. I'm having trouble grasping the logic though. And this is in no way an attack on you personally, I am honestly trying to understand these difficult situations before I get out into practice and come to terms with this since we will all most certainly have to make similar tough decisions related to this in our careers.

About people having different ethics and it being shades of gray, aren't there shared professional ethics that we all subscribe to as veterinarians? How is something like convenience euthanasia not against those shared ethics? The argument that the owner will just go kill the animal themselves seems like a logical fallacy to me. If our morals tell us that euthanizing a healthy animal for a non-medical reason is wrong, then the right thing to do is not euthanize the animal, even if the killing of that animal may happen anyway. It seems to me that our responsibility is instead to inform the owner why it would be wrong, why it would be painful if they tried to do it on their own, and to offer alternatives. Or in the case of post-op pain meds, if we as a profession decide we're ethically obliged to minimize pain and standards of care call for using post-op meds, then that is how we should practice. Again, being scared we would lose the client is an unconvincing, hollow argument that makes a lot of assumptions that may or may not occur. Do I abandon my convictions or my professional obligations simply to minimize the risk of losing a client - and a low-paying client at that?

The whole "the owner might kill it themselves" argument is obviously not going to be the norm for every person who walks into your clinic wanting a convenience euthanasia. But it gets used so frequently because it does happen and it's an ethical dilemma - on the one hand, agreeing to euthanize a healthy animal is generally considered wrong, but on the other hand, letting the owner kill it themselves (and probably not in a humane way) or dump it in a field somewhere to starve to death is also very much against our obligation to help our patients. This is what I mean by shades of grey - often there's not really a right or wrong answer, and you just have to pick the lesser of two evils. I would of course exhaust all other options first, but there are owners who simply want the animal put down and refuse to do anything else. In that case, I would rather give that animal a humane and painless death. There are other people who would much rather wash their hands of the situation entirely and not be involved, leaving the owner to do whatever else they may choose to that animal. You could argue that both choices are within the boundaries of professional ethics. Just because one person chooses the first route does not make the second route wrong, and vice versa.

I think we've beaten the pain meds vs. no pain meds argument to death, but it's the same idea. In my original post I was merely trying to explain why it happens in some clinics, but when dvm08 jumped down my throat for it I tried to present a situation in which I could see it being ethically acceptable to do a procedure without pain meds. My point being, my personal sense of ethics tells me that I need to do what's best for my patient. Sometimes that's going to mean choosing between two lousy options. If I have reason to believe that my patient is going to suffer or die because I refuse treatment, I'm going to treat to the best of the my ability given the circumstances. Maybe that means that I'll wind up providing substandard care once or twice in my career (because let's be honest, these are hypothetical situations that are going to happen rarely, if ever) but I prefer that to living with the knowledge that I sent an animal to a painful death when I had the power to do something.

You're right that there is a general code of ethics that we follow as veterinarians, but it doesn't exist to tell you exactly what you should do in every possible situation. For example, the AVMA's code of ethics clearly states: "Humane euthanasia of animals is an ethical veterinary procedure." It does not say that it's only ethical when the animal is sick or when the client can't pay. It does not say that convenience euthanasia is unethical. What's ethical and what isn't is never concrete in this situation. You have to be able to look at each situation on a case-by-case basis and decide for yourself what the best course of action is. If your personal sense of ethics and professional obligation says that you don't perform convenience euthanasias, then you don't do them. You are the one who controls your own decisions, so there's no "abandoning your convictions" here.

 

[dvm'08]

You seem to have this idea that you can draw up a standard operating procedure for any given situation and slap an "ethically wrong" label on anything that deviates from it. That's not the way it works. Any ethics debate is shades of grey, and what's ethical for one person is not necessarily going to be ethical for another. I won't give away care for free, nor would I consider myself ethically free of responsibility in every situation by refusing care. My sense of ethics and what's best for my patients may be different than yours, but that does not make them wrong, and vice versa.

I understand you perfectly. Ethics are one thing... standard of care is another.

This abstract 'idea' I speak of is not something I established all by myself. The standard of care is something that the profession (practicing veterinarians, academics, VMAs etc) as a whole sets. And its always evolving. It's what we consider to be minimally acceptable with respect to the care we provide to our patients. The original example you used (removing post-operative pain control from the procedure to save costs) violates the minimum standard of care. You can try and argue that you've done your patient a service by performing performing that procedure (rather then having the owner do it themselves, or not having it done at all), but the reality is that we as a profession find this to be unacceptable (withholding analgesia)... and we will hold you accountable for your actions.

A very good example of evolving standard of care is the idea of hospitalizing a patient in a facility overnight without 24-hour staffed nursing care. For many years this was considered the acceptable standard of care. This practice is falling out of favour, and will very likely (within the next 5-10 years) be considered unacceptable. You will either have to refer the patient to a 24-hour care facility or discharge it to the owner. You can debate the merits of whether this is a good thing or not... but its slowly going to happen (and is already happening in many jurisdictions). A veterinarian in Vancouver BC is currently being sued over this exact issue. What are people going to do when clients can't afford 24-hour care, and the patient isn't well enough to go home? Even with informed consent, you still open yourself up to liability if you decide to operate outside of the standard of care and hospitalize that patient in your non-staffed facility... if something happens (even if you warned that client 100 times) you're still on the hook.

Liability aside, clients cannot be allowed to dictate how we practice medicine. We need to hold ourselves to the ethical standard that is both set by the individual practitioner (which I agree may vary widely), and those set out by the Profession as a whole (even if you don't agree with them).

 

[MassDVMMPH]

Why would you still be on the hook if you warned the client 100 times? Animals are still considered property and the property owner decides what happens to them. If a vet offers options with possible consequences to the owner and DOCUMENTS everything and the owner chooses to do the thing that has risk associated with it, then it is the owner's fault, not the vet's. All we can do is try to get them to do the right thing - we cannot force it. Vets cannot be the only ones held to this ethical standard. Owners need to be held to it too - they are the ones who tie our hands.

 

[that redhead]

Since you seem to have no respect for our profession. I just wanted to inform you that states do subsidize vet school tuition because veterinarians are very important not just in caring for family pets but in research, disease control and public health. A veterinarian was the the first person to demonstrate that an insect could transmit disease which directly contributed to the discovery that mosquitoes transmitted malaria (there you go we helped the sick people in Africa). A veterinarian was the first to discover graft vs. host disease. A veterinarian was the first to identify West Nile Virus in North America. I could go on and on. Veterinarians are extremely important in many areas of health and have actually done a lot to help humans. You seem to think we only help animals, but veterinarians are a lot more important than you know and advances/discoveries in veterinary medicine have actually been the starting points for a lot of major advances in human medicine. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK37843/ , Please read this article, so that maybe next time you feel like coming to our thread and telling us there is something inherently wrong with our values you have a little more information.

Animals and humans live together, in order for us all to be healthy we have to support the health of both. Veterinarians help to keep livestock and family pets healthy so that they are not transmitting diseases to humans. There are also many service animals that drastically improve the quality of life for humans with debilitating diseases and we as veterinarians can keep these service animals up and running so they can do their jobs. There wouldn't be as much research in veterinary medicine if there weren't owners willing to pay thousands for their pets, so you can thank these people for some of the major advances in human medicine. Currently researchers have discovered that a peptide of the Feline Immunodeficiency Virus activates patients' t-cells to kill HIV, which may lead to help for a vaccine. Guess who one of the main researchers involved was, a vet school professor. http://jvi.asm.org/content/87/18/10004.full

Thank you for saying this. I swear my life's mission will be telling people that veterinarians have roles outside companion animal medicine (not that there's anything wrong with companion animal med, but it's annoying when everyone assumes that's what you're doing because what else could a vet do?)

 

[BlackDog17]

I understand you perfectly. Ethics are one thing... standard of care is another.

This abstract 'idea' I speak of is not something I established all by myself. The standard of care is something that the profession (practicing veterinarians, academics, VMAs etc) as a whole sets. And its always evolving. It's what we consider to be minimally acceptable with respect to the care we provide to our patients. The original example you used (removing post-operative pain control from the procedure to save costs) violates the minimum standard of care. You can try and argue that you've done your patient a service by performing performing that procedure (rather then having the owner do it themselves, or not having it done at all), but the reality is that we as a profession find this to be unacceptable (withholding analgesia)... and we will hold you accountable for your actions.

A very good example of evolving standard of care is the idea of hospitalizing a patient in a facility overnight without 24-hour staffed nursing care. For many years this was considered the acceptable standard of care. This practice is falling out of favour, and will very likely (within the next 5-10 years) be considered unacceptable. You will either have to refer the patient to a 24-hour care facility or discharge it to the owner. You can debate the merits of whether this is a good thing or not... but its slowly going to happen (and is already happening in many jurisdictions). A veterinarian in Vancouver BC is currently being sued over this exact issue. What are people going to do when clients can't afford 24-hour care, and the patient isn't well enough to go home? Even with informed consent, you still open yourself up to liability if you decide to operate outside of the standard of care and hospitalize that patient in your non-staffed facility... if something happens (even if you warned that client 100 times) you're still on the hook.

Liability aside, clients cannot be allowed to dictate how we practice medicine. We need to hold ourselves to the ethical standard that is both set by the individual practitioner (which I agree may vary widely), and those set out by the Profession as a whole (even if you don't agree with them).

See, I can think of plenty of situations where this policy is excellent, and plenty of others where it is unnecessary and I would feel morally wrong charging a client the cost of keeping an overnight tech in the clinic. That does not mean that I'm "allowing the client to dictate the way I practice". It means I am cognizant of the fact that I have an ethical duty to both my patient and my client. I'm not advocating doing anything illegal, nor am I claiming that any veterinarian is free of liability if anything should go wrong as a result of their decision, even if it can be argued to be "ethically correct". I'm simply saying that there scenarios in which ethics cannot be clearly delineated. Yes, the profession sets out a standard of ethics, and that's great. But as I described in another post above, those standards do not provide guidelines for every possible situation. Sometimes you have to use your own brain and make a decision yourself based on the circumstances and the information you have available. That's part of practicing medicine in any field.

 

[nyanko]

Minimum standard of care is not a question of ethics, though.

 

[dvm'08]

Why would you still be on the hook if you warned the client 100 times? Animals are still considered property and the property owner decides what happens to them. If a vet offers options with possible consequences to the owner and DOCUMENTS everything and the owner chooses to do the thing that has risk associated with it, then it is the owner's fault, not the vet's. All we can do is try to get them to do the right thing - we cannot force it. Vets cannot be the only ones held to this ethical standard. Owners need to be held to it too - they are the ones who tie our hands.

If you do something that deviates from the standard of care, it doesn't matter if you have informed consent or not, you are solely responsible for your actions.

Here is an example. You have a 100 lb Mastiff that has a CCL rupture. You have never done a CCL repair. You advise the client that you recommend referral for a TPLO. The client says no, I would like you to do it. You tell the client you've never done one, but you are willing to give it a try so you can help this lame dog. You do an ex-cap repair, and while you're doing the repair, you accidentally fracture the tibial tuberosity when drilling the pilot hole. It could happen to anybody... right? You tell the client what happened; you don't have the equipment to pin the tibial tuberosity and you tell the client again that the dog has to be referred to a surgeon. You suture the dog up and it goes the the surgeon, has a TPLO and gets its tibial tuberosity pinned. Cost: $6000.

Client sues you. You say: I have a informed consent! Signed and everything. The surgeon they call to testify against you says you had absolutely no business offering to do that procedure and that you should have said "no". The VMA finds you committed malpractice.

This exact scenario happened last year.

The point is that informed consent does not absolve you from your professional conduct. Ultimately the buck stops at you.

 

[Falina]

I'm not understanding why everyone is arguing back and forth about this.

Look up your states' Standard of Care guidelines. Follow them. That's it.

I live in California, and mine states:
"When administering general anesthesia, a veterinarian
shall use appropriate and humane methods of anesthesia,
analgesia and sedation to minimize pain and distress during and after any procedures."

What is appropriate? That's for you to decide. It's also for the state board to decide if you get reported, so you should probably go with a protocol that they would approve of.

 

[DVMDream]

If you do something that deviates from the standard of care, it doesn't matter if you have informed consent or not, you are solely responsible for your actions.

Here is an example. You have a 100 lb Mastiff that has a CCL rupture. You have never done a CCL repair. You advise the client that you recommend referral for a TPLO. The client says no, I would like you to do it. You tell the client you've never done one, but you are willing to give it a try so you can help this lame dog. You do an ex-cap repair, and while you're doing the repair, you accidentally fracture the tibial tuberosity when drilling the pilot hole. It could happen to anybody... right? You tell the client what happened; you don't have the equipment to pin the tibial tuberosity and you tell the client again that the dog has to be referred to a surgeon. You suture the dog up and it goes the the surgeon, has a TPLO and gets its tibial tuberosity pinned. Cost: $6000.

Client sues you. You say: I have a informed consent! Signed and everything. The surgeon they call to testify against you says you had absolutely no business offering to do that procedure and that you should have said "no". The VMA finds you committed malpractice.

This exact scenario happened last year.

The point is that informed consent does not absolve you from your professional conduct. Ultimately the buck stops at you.

I get this to a point. Especially in the situation above, the vet should have stuck to not doing the CCL repair, but I have to ask... at what point do we stop allowing clients to dictate what we do and then getting mad about it and suing us? We are putting ourselves into a lose/lose situation here where clients can/will and do "force" us to do or not do things and then sue us when things don't go the way they expected. What if that vet had said no to the CCL repair? Would that client have been off on the internet complaining about how the vet "refused" them treatment for their dog (as has been shown to happen recently in the media)? What impact would that have had on the vet? We are really getting ourselves into a situation of damned if you do and damned if you don't. I am just curious as to at what point is the owner held responsible for their decision? At what point should the buck be on the owner's shoulders?

For example, we have had clients refuse to take their pet home and refuse to take to emergency for overnight care... what do we do? Throw the dog on the street? Shove it into the owner's arms? You can't force someone that is refusing to take their dog home or to emergency to take the dog. Sure you could call the police, but how will that impact you? What kind of cruel things will the owner post about you then? What kind of angry mob will you have to deal with? What repercussions does that bring? Sure it is the correct thing to do. It is the thing that won't get you in trouble with the VMA, but it could bring on a whole host of angry people who just don't understand your reasoning and attack you.

How do vets protect themselves then? When do we tell the owner, "no, you made this decision, you were fully informed, you were warned of potential negative consequences and you still decided to take "x" path despite being given/told that "y" or "z" path is better, you are responsible for this decision that you made."

I am just curious as to when do vets stick up for themselves against sue happy clients? When do vets stick up for themselves against the media hounding when an angry client posts a false or inaccurate account as to what you said/did? When does the VMA step up and say that the owner is responsible for making a decision when that owner was informed prior to that decision that there were other/better options?

 

[StartingoverVet]

I get this to a point. Especially in the situation above, the vet should have stuck to not doing the CCL repair, but I have to ask... at what point do we stop allowing clients to dictate what we do and then getting mad about it and suing us? We are putting ourselves into a lose/lose situation here where clients can/will and do "force" us to do or not do things and then sue us when things don't go the way they expected. What if that vet had said no to the CCL repair? Would that client have been off on the internet complaining about how the vet "refused" them treatment for their dog (as has been shown to happen recently in the media)? What impact would that have had on the vet? We are really getting ourselves into a situation of damned if you do and damned if you don't. I am just curious as to at what point is the owner held responsible for their decision? At what point should the buck be on the owner's shoulders?

For example, we have had clients refuse to take their pet home and refuse to take to emergency for overnight care... what do we do? Throw the dog on the street? Shove it into the owner's arms? You can't force someone that is refusing to take their dog home or to emergency to take the dog. Sure you could call the police, but how will that impact you? What kind of cruel things will the owner post about you then? What kind of angry mob will you have to deal with? What repercussions does that bring? Sure it is the correct thing to do. It is the thing that won't get you in trouble with the VMA, but it could bring on a whole host of angry people who just don't understand your reasoning and attack you.

How do vets protect themselves then? When do we tell the owner, "no, you made this decision, you were fully informed, you were warned of potential negative consequences and you still decided to take "x" path despite being given/told that "y" or "z" path is better, you are responsible for this decision that you made."

I am just curious as to when do vets stick up for themselves against sue happy clients? When do vets stick up for themselves against the media hounding when an angry client posts a false or inaccurate account as to what you said/did? When does the VMA step up and say that the owner is responsible for making a decision when that owner was informed prior to that decision that there were other/better options?

These are pretty good questions.
Things look to be definitely getting trickier these days, and I think vets are increasingly in untenable situations, where they always lose.

Finances conflict with standard of care, which conflict with client expectations, which then lead to unhappy, unrealistic clients, and potential backlash or dodgy ethical situations with professional and personal effects.

Personally, I find the case DVM 08 cites as abhorrent. When a vet is forced to choose a difficult compromise forced on them by the client, and understood by the client, it seems ridiculous to second guess that decision. I don't think the animals are well served to force vets into not treating to avoid these kinds of situations. Doing nothing can often be the worse harm, even though it is "safer" professionally, assuming the client doesn't ruin your business.

 

[smallbiz2doc]

some companies do this.

Do you have examples? I still keep finding they all reimburse after the fact, and that it's actually set up like property (as opposed to health) insurance.

 

[dyachei]

Do you have examples? I still keep finding they all reimburse after the fact, and that it's actually set up like property (as opposed to health) insurance.

I can't remember off the top of my head but I did find a couple at various conventions

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

People only think vet care is expensive because most of them are used to human medical co-pays, which make human med seem cheap by comparison for out of pocket expenses. It would be great to have the same system.

I pretty much guarantee that revenues would increase across the board if this were true. It would never happen this way, but it is a nice dream.

Holy ****, a thousand times yes.

They don't understand that we are offering these things are an insane discount for the same amount of expertise, similar equipment, etc. I mean, we have to buy the same Xray machines, the same anesthetics and supplies, the same surgical supplies, etc.

I mean, what do you think a hysterectomy costs on a person? And we do a spay for $150 and the owner's complain about the cost. SMH.

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

Or you know...it's a pet...look i love my dog and all and would definitely cry when she passes away but I would never pay thousands of dollars on her when clearly there are homeless families in the street and people who go years without treatment for debilitating diseases (elderly people cutting pills in half). I'm talking about random people who I'm less emotionally attached to than my dog but geez they're human. Something is inherently wrong with your value system if an animal's life is worth more than a human's. There you go. I bet I just rattled some cages by posting this. You won't see states subsidizing vet school tuition anytime soon because these values are shared by the vast majority of people.

Okay. I'll stop bothering your forums now. I was only posting for the past day because my sibling was interested in vet school.

You do understand that vets (usually specialists like myself but not always) can and do perform a myriad of other functions in many industries than small animal clinical medicine, right?

E.g.

Food supply/farm health
Zoonotic disease/epidemics (swine flu anyone?)
Comparative medical research and animal models of disease (I can't tell you how many MDs and PhDs think they know about animal models and are dead wrong about everything from interpretation of lesions to experimental design)
National and international policy in everything from foreign animal diseases to animal welfare

We don't just patch up Fluffy and Fido. Small animal medicine may be the most obvious specialty that vets gravitate to but it is by no means the only or most important.

And no one ever said animal lives are worth more than humans. I have never known a single veterinarian who thought that, and any vet that does isn't fit to be a vet.

 

[PhatHippo49]

I realize that some of the earlier posts on this forum are from 2011, but how can the average student debt be only $120,000? That is $30,000 a year including tuition, fees, books, rent, living expenses, insurance, etc? I don't know a school that even has a baseline tuition that low, let alone with everything else...how is that possible? I'm looking at around $160,000 and I thought THAT was considered low.

 

[epivetlove]

Because it's an average. I know plenty of students here at A&M that have parents that are generous and are footing the entire bill, and I'm sure that happens at other schools. My school has COA and living expenses listed at about 37k except for last year. I think NCSU and OKState, among others, have similar numbers.

 

[twelvetigers]

Because it's an average. I know plenty of students here at A&M that have parents that are generous and are footing the entire bill, and I'm sure that happens at other schools. My school has COA and living expenses listed at about 37k except for last year. I think NCSU and OKState, among others, have similar numbers.

IS at OKState is around $15k a semester (tuition only).

 

[PhatHippo49]

Because it's an average. I know plenty of students here at A&M that have parents that are generous and are footing the entire bill, and I'm sure that happens at other schools. My school has COA and living expenses listed at about 37k except for last year. I think NCSU and OKState, among others, have similar numbers.

Ohh, gotcha. Sorry I assumed that was the average of students who took out loans.

IS at OKState is around $15k a semester (tuition only).

Oh wow!! Sorry, I thought that average was just for students who took out debt. And $15K a semester?? Wow, that is amazing.

 

[StartingoverVet]

Every time this thread pops up I just want to reply:

NOT ENOUGH.

There, I did it. Thread should be closed, there is nothing left to add.

 

[CanHardlyWait]

And it might surprise you to know that many vets agree that spending tens of thousands of dollars to extend one animal's life (for instance, there's a vet school that offers bone marrow transplants to dogs now) makes no real sense when you realize how many millions of animals, that are just as wonderful as that one, are being systematically euthanized in the prime of their lives all across this country. Just think of how many lives that money could save if it was redirected. There is definitely a disconnect between the ivory towers of vet med and the vets on the ground, so to speak. My employer contracts with local shelters to do their humane euthanasias, so I've seen these wonderful creatures up close and personal. I adopted one of them myself, but you can't save them all. When I hear about someone spending tens of thousands to extend their dog's life by a matter of months, I understand their motivation, but I also see the eyes of these dogs who will never have a chance to be loved and given treats and taken on long walks. I just think it would be better in a lot of cases if people let go a bit earlier than a lot of them are encouraged to do, and used that money to give another creature a chance at knowing some happiness.

Thank you for saying this. I was just today expressing my frustration with the differing levels of care we learn for different animals. I'm tracking mixed animal ( and have a real interest in shelter med) and so I take a lot of small animal classes and a lot of food animal classes. Both can be equally frustrating-I get frustrated by how little medical care individual food animals can receive, and I get frustrated by the ridiculous amount of care available to companion animals (for the right price, of course). It is hard to learn about how advanced veterinary medicine is and what we could do with our knowledge, only to live in the real world where many pet owners can't afford blood work, much less MRIs. I want to work in poor, underserved communities and much of what I'm learning is soo far off from what I will actually be doing.
Sorry, not meaning to crash this thread, just a rant that was really relevant to a conversation I was just having with a classmate.

 

[Lissarae06]

IS at OKState is around $15k a semester (tuition only).

No that's per year.

 

[twelvetigers]

No that's per year.

... yeah, that's what I meant. Haha.

 

[MassDVMMPH]

If you do something that deviates from the standard of care, it doesn't matter if you have informed consent or not, you are solely responsible for your actions.

Here is an example. You have a 100 lb Mastiff that has a CCL rupture. You have never done a CCL repair. You advise the client that you recommend referral for a TPLO. The client says no, I would like you to do it. You tell the client you've never done one, but you are willing to give it a try so you can help this lame dog. You do an ex-cap repair, and while you're doing the repair, you accidentally fracture the tibial tuberosity when drilling the pilot hole. It could happen to anybody... right? You tell the client what happened; you don't have the equipment to pin the tibial tuberosity and you tell the client again that the dog has to be referred to a surgeon. You suture the dog up and it goes the the surgeon, has a TPLO and gets its tibial tuberosity pinned. Cost: $6000.

Client sues you. You say: I have a informed consent! Signed and everything. The surgeon they call to testify against you says you had absolutely no business offering to do that procedure and that you should have said "no". The VMA finds you committed malpractice.

This exact scenario happened last year.

The point is that informed consent does not absolve you from your professional conduct. Ultimately the buck stops at you.

That's a bit extreme. I would never do a surgery with which I had no familiarity, but if an animal needs to be hospitalized and the owner refuses to take the dog to a 24-hour facility and he is made aware that there is no one in our hospital overnight in case anything goes wrong and he does not want to take the dog home instead, and then something happens overnight, then that is the owner's fault, not the vet's. And there is definitely a safer option with that particular mastiff case, namely pain medication to make the dog more comfortable until the owner can find an experienced surgeon who is perhaps less expensive than the TPLO specialist.

 

[absinthine]

For anyone feeling a little discouraged by this thread, I would definitely encourage them to search out what's on the AVMA Job Board for their area! I'm lucky enough to live mid-atlantic, and the (advertised) salaries were often >60k, with at least a few encouraging new vets to apply. I don't know if there's an element I'm missing that reveals a more realistic expectation, but obviously it's a decent drawing board to start off with and consider the realities of your own situation. If you check out the AVMA postings in your area and realize they're not enough to support cost of living + expected debt, then that would definitely be cause for concern. Being so familiar with the area I live in (~Annapolis, MD) I have a firm grasp on what I'd be spending for housing, and this thread has given me a decent idea of how to figure what my debt payment would be. It's obviously all circumstantial, and relative to what kind of market you graduate into I guess, but it was a small reassurance that I wouldn't have to stock grocery store shelves overnight (again....) to make ends meet, given the current climate.

(I just wanted to be positive for a minute, without losing sight of everyone's concerns :c )

 

[absinthine]

(Please be kind if there's significant flaws in my statement, aha, I've been a silent reader for a really long time now and I'm trying to become more active~)

 

[LetItSnow]

Or you know...it's a pet...look i love my dog and all and would definitely cry when she passes away but I would never pay thousands of dollars on her when clearly there are homeless families in the street and people who go years without treatment for debilitating diseases (elderly people cutting pills in half). I'm talking about random people who I'm less emotionally attached to than my dog but geez they're human. Something is inherently wrong with your value system if an animal's life is worth more than a human's. There you go. I bet I just rattled some cages by posting this. You won't see states subsidizing vet school tuition anytime soon because these values are shared by the vast majority of people.

Okay. I'll stop bothering your forums now. I was only posting for the past day because my sibling was interested in vet school.

The biggest problem with this post isn't that you don't want to pay thousands for your pet for health care. That's fine. How much money to put into a pet is a value call that has a lot of factors behind it that are highly variable from person to person. No worries. I won't criticize you for that.

But what I *will* criticize you for is hypocrisy.

Don't give me the bull**** "how can anyone pay for an animal when there are homeless families in the street" argument, because that one is just a piece of hypocritical nonsense.

Do you give up eating out so that you can scrounge every last dime to donate? Because, you know, there are homeless families in the street.

Do you cut back on clothes and only buy at good will and other places so that you can donate? Because, you know, there are homeless families in the street.

I mean, really.... if you're spending ANYTHING beyond the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM needed to survive, you're a huge hypocrite for pulling out the "homeless families in the street" argument. Worse than that - your value system is even more screwed up than the people you're accusing .... I mean, c'mon, is a brand new pair of jeans really more valuable than a human life? No? Then how come you bought new jeans instead of getting perfectly functional ones from good will and donating the difference?

I have absolutely no objection to people not wanting to spend a lot of money on sick animals. Doesn't bother me a bit. Because I understand that people have other financial obligations that may be more important, or they may just plain not value the animal as much as others. It's all good.

But when you pull that crappy argument out .... yeah, I'm going to call you on it.

 

[Escalla]

The biggest problem with this post isn't that you don't want to pay thousands for your pet for health care. That's fine. How much money to put into a pet is a value call that has a lot of factors behind it that are highly variable from person to person. No worries. I won't criticize you for that.

But what I *will* criticize you for is hypocrisy.

Don't give me the bullcrap "how can anyone pay for an animal when there are homeless families in the street" argument, because that one is just a piece of hypocritical nonsense.

Do you give up eating out so that you can scrounge every last dime to donate? Because, you know, there are homeless families in the street.

Do you cut back on clothes and only buy at good will and other places so that you can donate? Because, you know, there are homeless families in the street.

I mean, really.... if you're spending ANYTHING beyond the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM needed to survive, you're a huge hypocrite for pulling out the "homeless families in the street" argument. Worse than that - your value system is even more screwed up than the people you're accusing .... I mean, c'mon, is a brand new pair of jeans really more valuable than a human life? No? Then how come you bought new jeans instead of getting perfectly functional ones from good will and donating the difference?

I have absolutely no objection to people not wanting to spend a lot of money on sick animals. Doesn't bother me a bit. Because I understand that people have other financial obligations that may be more important, or they may just plain not value the animal as much as others. It's all good.

But when you pull that crappy argument out .... yeah, I'm going to call you on it.

I'm bookmarking this post for whenever that ridiculous argument surfaces. A+.