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RANT HERE thread
- Thread starter flyhi
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Sending kind and gentle thoughts to you. Hope you find some solace.
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Saw an 11 month old golden yesterday for acute hind limb paresis and ataxia. Had set it up for an MRI on monday as owners didn't want to leave him at the hospital overnight for monitoring. Comes in today cause they feel he's worse (which he was but still ambulatory). Did emergency MRI. Top differential is likely neoplasia. They had asked me what were the chances of it being cancer ( they're other golden has lsa) to which I said I would hope low but he's a golden. I hate that that's what it turned out to most likely be.
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Lousy farmers stealing an hour
Just make some crop circles and call it even
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It sucks. Could it not happen on a Saturday night?
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Holy cow that's awful. Such a young pup with an entire life ahead of him 🙁
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11 months? spinal nephroblastoma?
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Are they going to do surgery and get a chunk of it/at least debulk? In a younger dog I'd do that....
(at least to make sure it's not an abscess or something)
(at least to make sure it's not an abscess or something)
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Hey man, my on call shift was 1 hour shorter. I have no complaints.
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Located at T8. We gave them the option of trying to debulk or sample it at least. My understanding is that they're thinking on it.
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Had a package rerouted because it needed a signature to be delivered and I'm home in FL this week. But I checked the tracking info this morning and for some reason it's out for delivery in TN again 
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A more important rant: boy cat has been straining to urinate this morning. So I get to start off my break taking him to the vet, which I'm sure will be fantastic for his stress levels.
🙁 hope he's doing well
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He's ok. Still hasn't peed yet today (though I know he did last night) but his bladder was small so not likely that he's blocked. I need him to pee so I can bring them the urine to look at!
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Discovered I need a tetanus booster. Blah. That crap made me so sick last time (how has it been 10 years?!😱)
I had to get one when a kitty kitty meow meow bit me. I'm glad I'm up to date now though?
My parents are building a new house and they've been taking me over there nearly every day and there are nails/screws/metal sheets everywhere. I feel like the only person trying to remind them not to get tetanus from stepping on sharp objects even though they all insist they're good because they're up to date on their boosters lol.
I'm rather accident prone so I've probably had 10 in the last ten years... despite me explaining I'm probably super immune they always insist on a booster when I injure myself. I get so sick and my arm get really sore to the point I can't lift it for a day or two. 🙁 At least it's not as bad as the rabies shots.
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It is interesting how different people react to each vaccine. Rabies was nothing for me, but I know others got super sick.
Tetanus knocks me out for at least 24 hours.
And pertussis gave me seizures as an infant.
I should have known it was going to be a crap day when the first thing I saw this morning was a ****ing saddle thrombus. Ugh.
Ever since the rabies vaccines I've reacted worse to any vaccine. I had just about every side effect to the rabies vaccine except for anaphylaxis/death. I passed out, had fever, lethargy, nausea, muscle soreness, redness, heat, rash at injection site, joint pain all over my body, a rash over my chest...all of which got worse with each shot. I was out of work for 4 or 5 days after the 3rd shot. Luckily my titers were plenty high to start clinics.
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I'll be down for 24 hours from the stupid tetanus vaccine. Stupid fever/chills/stiff arm last time. I'm gonna premed this go around and see if that helps...
I have to get rabies this year too, so that doesn't make me feel good, though I've heard conflicting things (some say it's terrible, others say no big deal...)
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Sorry Trilt 🙁 Those are such crappy cases.
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Hi. I'm back. Work has gone to **** the past few months and it's now gotten to the point that literally selling my house (which I only bought a year ago for anyone keeping score) and moving 500km away seems like the more reasonable option. I hate that I have to do this because I really like the house and the place and most of my co-workers and clients but I am profoundly burnt out due to being understaffed at work. And my boss has no immediate plans to not be understaffed because she doesn't want to pay them. I told the other full time vet (who I consider a friend) and his response was, "I don't blame you." I have a phone interview with a clinic in another city. I feel like total **** about this decision because it's going to make things miserable for the people left behind and I'll be uprooting my housemate (again) but my mental health is severely impaired right now and I need out of the toxic environment. (I'm under non-compete so a job at another clinic in my current city isn't an option).
Ugh I feel like a horrible human being.
Ugh I feel like a horrible human being.
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You have to do what's right for your mental health. Try not to beat yourself up too much.
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Please please please PM if you need to chat.
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Hope everything goes well for you.
Here are some magical tetanus vaccine and rabies bandages for you.
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So this weekend I was in with my puppers at the vet I work at (we were getting his eye checked out), when the receptionist got a call from a prior client that a particular program (they do insanely low-cost spays and neuters ($20 excluding pain meds) and "physical exams" for rabies vaccines but there's a 97% chance your pup has internal parasites because they don't do fecal exams) had an incident with a particular kitty, and if we could fix it.
Apparently, they decided to do a four leg, low-cost declaw through this program, and now the cat has practically every side effect we warn about- postop infection in 2 legs, behavioral issues, and incontinence to name a few. OH and because it happened there at tcap, they didn't pay for hardly enough pain meds to ease the pain for postop.
You know, I can understand not having any money and wanting the cheapest spay/neuter and rabies vac for your pet. But why why WHY would you declaw at a spay&neuter clinic??? And then not pay for the "optional" pain meds? 😡
Apparently, they decided to do a four leg, low-cost declaw through this program, and now the cat has practically every side effect we warn about- postop infection in 2 legs, behavioral issues, and incontinence to name a few. OH and because it happened there at tcap, they didn't pay for hardly enough pain meds to ease the pain for postop.
You know, I can understand not having any money and wanting the cheapest spay/neuter and rabies vac for your pet. But why why WHY would you declaw at a spay&neuter clinic??? And then not pay for the "optional" pain meds? 😡
Huge caveat that I don't know anything about this operation so obviously can't comment on it much or in any specific detail - these are just some first impression thoughts on this post.
Why is a spay/neuter clinic even doing a cosmetic procedure like that? Just seems like a weird division of resources for a procedure that doesn't accomplish the desexing goal. I can sort of think of some reasoning for doing it but feel like it would be more typical to point clients to cheaper GPs who perform the procedure rather than doing it during the spay/neuter.
As for the pain medication thing - do they provide baseline pain meds and let people choose if they'd like to pay for additional pain medication? Providing baseline adequate pain control should not be optional in my opinion. Letting people pay if they want extra is fine, but there should always be a minimum provided because to provide nothing is really just not good welfare or standard of care. I know there are certain things you simply can't provide when you're a low cost place but keeping animals out of pain/preventing suffering should always be a priority and if you can't give any pain medication then you shouldn't do the procedure.
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I have minimal experience with this organization, and all experience I have had is through clients who went to there and had to go to the GP because something wasn't caught. I personally see no point in declawing at a spay/neuter clinic because of that. Legitimate medical reasons aside, declaw is a personal choice, so I don't think that there should be a 'low cost declaw' for those instances (might be an unpopular opinion, so I apologize if I offended anyone).
As for the medication, on their website it says, "If you purchased take-home pain medication, you can begin giving it to your pet the day after surgery." For March, they're advertising $20 spays and neuters and they say, "Additional fees will be incurred if owners purchase take home pain medications or antibiotics" which indicated that they don't provide take home pain meds. Which I think is sacrificing standard of care and good welfare.
I know that post op care and medication isn't always feasible- like a TNR clinic where the cats are mostly feral are won't be receiving care. But still. For a privately owned animal, I think it's different.
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I've never heard of someone having their cat's back feet declawed. Is that just so they don't have to remember to trim them? Those nails don't scratch furniture (unless the cat is climbing up something, maybe?) so I don't see the necessity of that.
I do think some of this depends on the circumstances and things can get funky easily. Also going to add that a lot of this is just exploring the thought process for why certain things are/are not provided by certain places, and this isn't a comment on whether what they do provide is right/enough or not.
First off re: declawing, the reason I was thinking of wasn't medical but rather that the owner would relinquish the cat unless declawing was performed. In those circumstances many shelters/organizations are of the mind that it's better to have a declawed cat in a home than an undeclawed cat in a shelter (especially since cats have lower adoption rates than dogs and tend to be euthanized at higher raters in shelter settings). Again, I think it would have been more prudent for a spay/neuter clinic to refer the owner to someone who does declaws more frequently (this does depend on how frequently the spay/neuterclinic does declaws though, though for most I would imagine it would be relatively infrequently unless it was a specifically advertised service).
It sounds (hopefully) like they are providing pain meds at least the day of the surgery. I'm curious what take home pain meds they offer for clients to use. I feel that take home pain meds aren't terribly difficult to provide for owned animals, particularly since there are some relatively cheap options S/N clinics can use that still provide good pain control. There are some special considerations for both animals and clients of course. Things like ability and willingness to medicate the animal, etc.
A lot of this depends on the resources of the clients and the clinic itself. Some clients have basically no money. This may be the first and last time their pet will ever receive veterinary care, and for many places the priority is on stretching their dollars as much as possible to help as many pets as possible receive some level of care. There starts to be the question: what is welfare, and how do we make sure we're giving animals good welfare? The answer to that has a lot of nuances that can be hard to smooth out nicely, and a lot of those answers depend on priorities and capabilities and all sorts of other things. It's difficult to find a good black and white answer to it and I think of lot of these answers depend on personal ethics. In many cases it's difficult to say whether the right answer was truly landed on, especially since which answer is right will often depend on who is answering the question. There are obviously many clearly egregious examples, but I think many more are in this gray category and can be hard to deliberate on.
Ultimately I don't know what pain meds that animal got, or what its protocols were, or what kind of care it received. It's hard to figure out if (and how much) welfare was compromised without knowing those sorts of things, and even then it's sometimes difficult to pass judgment. I do hope your veterinarian contacts the practitioners at the S/N clinic to learn more about that cat's specific case and the circumstances surrounding it (also not a judgmental "You dun messed up now!" phone call, more of a collegial one) and that the cat gets the care it needs to recover well and do better.
It sounds (hopefully) like they are providing pain meds at least the day of the surgery. I'm curious what take home pain meds they offer for clients to use. I feel that take home pain meds aren't terribly difficult to provide for owned animals, particularly since there are some relatively cheap options S/N clinics can use that still provide good pain control. There are some special considerations for both animals and clients of course. Things like ability and willingness to medicate the animal, etc.
A lot of this depends on the resources of the clients and the clinic itself. Some clients have basically no money. This may be the first and last time their pet will ever receive veterinary care, and for many places the priority is on stretching their dollars as much as possible to help as many pets as possible receive some level of care. There starts to be the question: what is welfare, and how do we make sure we're giving animals good welfare? The answer to that has a lot of nuances that can be hard to smooth out nicely, and a lot of those answers depend on priorities and capabilities and all sorts of other things. It's difficult to find a good black and white answer to it and I think of lot of these answers depend on personal ethics. In many cases it's difficult to say whether the right answer was truly landed on, especially since which answer is right will often depend on who is answering the question. There are obviously many clearly egregious examples, but I think many more are in this gray category and can be hard to deliberate on.
Ultimately I don't know what pain meds that animal got, or what its protocols were, or what kind of care it received. It's hard to figure out if (and how much) welfare was compromised without knowing those sorts of things, and even then it's sometimes difficult to pass judgment. I do hope your veterinarian contacts the practitioners at the S/N clinic to learn more about that cat's specific case and the circumstances surrounding it (also not a judgmental "You dun messed up now!" phone call, more of a collegial one) and that the cat gets the care it needs to recover well and do better.
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Oh I completely agree with all you said. In most cases, I completely agree.
I will say, our clinic is in a *nicer* area of town, and the person here phrased to me like "she just didn't want to pay for the procedure done here, even though she takes her pets here all the time and buys expensive "healthy, no grain, organic" food, goes on fancy vacations, and boards animals here all the time, so she should've known to not do that". But every situation is different, as frustrating as it may be.
I agree it's difficult. Is client taking advantage of these services or legitimately in a bad place in their life right now and can't afford this type of care otherwise? Does client have good intentions for their pet? Is client providing adequate care? Was client sufficiently made aware of the risks of having a certain procedure done and of what sorts of things would or wouldn't be provided at a low cost facility? Was client well informed about potential complications? Alternatives to procedures?
This is a huge tangent but:
I generally want to be cautious about making people feel ashamed of the choices they've made about the healthcare of their pets and where they received it. If my goal is to prevent them from making choices I see as inadequate again then I should be someone they feel comfortable seeing when those decisions don't go well and someone who is willing to counsel and work with them on those decisions. My goal isn't to have a client who makes all the choices I would make but rather a client who can make their own informed decisions about care after we talk about it (with obviously inhumane options ruled out, e.g. things like abdominal surgery without anesthesia or other blatantly unethical things). People can be held responsible for the choices they've made without being unnecessarily shamed or belittled for them and I think that's an important distinction to make.
I think part of the role of a veterinarian is to educate clients and this can be a good opportunity for that. It's awful what happened to that cat but the fact is that that decision has already been made and can't be undone and the only option is for everyone to move forward and do their best to care for the cat. Maybe this client feels awful about what happened or maybe they don't, maybe they were being cheap and their pet was harmed by it, maybe they legitimately didn't know the harm that could have been caused by a declaw. That's hard to suss out before they walk through the door.
I will add that there are totally people who push every single button on planet earth and just get on everyone's nerves and it can be hard to give them nonjudgmental care when they're like that. I still think some effort should be put in there to be thoughtful about the way they're being interacted with.
I dunno, I'm starting to ramble because it's late but I think it's important to try to leave certain thoughts about your clients at the exam room door, as difficult as that may be sometimes.
I think part of the role of a veterinarian is to educate clients and this can be a good opportunity for that. It's awful what happened to that cat but the fact is that that decision has already been made and can't be undone and the only option is for everyone to move forward and do their best to care for the cat. Maybe this client feels awful about what happened or maybe they don't, maybe they were being cheap and their pet was harmed by it, maybe they legitimately didn't know the harm that could have been caused by a declaw. That's hard to suss out before they walk through the door.
I will add that there are totally people who push every single button on planet earth and just get on everyone's nerves and it can be hard to give them nonjudgmental care when they're like that. I still think some effort should be put in there to be thoughtful about the way they're being interacted with.
I dunno, I'm starting to ramble because it's late but I think it's important to try to leave certain thoughts about your clients at the exam room door, as difficult as that may be sometimes.
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Big hug. I've been thinking about you and B and was hoping everything was OK. I'm having very similar troubles at work (although likely not as bad as yours considering your call schedule!) and I've been trying to get out without much success 🙁 Hope you get to feeling better soon- I understand you'd feel guilty but you have to do what's best for you. Miss you.
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I've seen it when there's an immunocompromised family member (we didn't do the surgery, though).
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Coquette, you have to do what's best for yourself. If that means getting out, get out. If it means getting another job offer and negotiating with your boss, you can try that, too.
always here to chat
always here to chat
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Yep. I knew a client whose kitten accidentally gave her single scratch that landed her in the hospital for like two weeks. We agreed to do a four paw declaw. Plus it was a kitten, and that always makes the procedure a bit less traumatic.
I'm sorry 🙁 I've been in a similar work environment (as a vet assistant) and having left and never looked back, I can tell you that it is worth it even though you will feel guilty for leaving the few staff members there behind. Some bosses just don't seem to get that if they provide a decent work environment, they won;t have turnover. I hope you find a solution that works out, but please put yourself first!
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A woman I went to high school with just posted a video of a dog escaping his crate along with a huge rant about people keeping their dogs in "cages" and it's abuse, blah blah blah. I'm a firm believer in crate training and my dogs absolutely love their crate. Our behaviorist at school praised me for that too, so I responded explaining crates aren't bad and can be very good for many dogs but also shouldn't be used as punishment or in situations where it puts the dog at risk (like the escapee dog). Now I'm dreading her responding telling me I'm torturing my dogs or I don't know what I'm talking about. Ugh. I probably should have just ignored her post.
I have two dogs that love their crates and one escapee (who now has an ImpactCrate). I touch the treat jar and they bolt into their kennels. Kennels = food/safeness/goodness to those two. It makes traveling with them so much easier (especially when staying with my SO's family or in a hotel) and they are great patients in the hospital. My escapee still eats every meal in his kennel and even lays down in there on his own will w/ door open so I'm happy with how far he's come for a dog that was formerly chained outside, and we're still making progress, however he requires a hefty drug combo to be kenneled safely alone. My dog that just had her arthrodesis plate removed needs to be restricted the next 4-6 months. Do you know how happy I am that she is kennel trained?! So yes, I love crates. All the crates. I actually have more crates than dogs. Haha.
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I have 3 dogs, and if I'm up too late, they will literally "ask" to go up to their crate so they can go to bed. They have a very comfy kuranda bed downstairs, but I think they prefer the safety of their crate for uninterrupted overnight sleep. No one on earth could ever convince me they don't love their crate. Also, for the escapee dog in the video, I suggested that maybe they just needed a different kind of crate/different positive reinforcement. It was a wire crate and the big old pittie squished himself out of the bottom slot for the plastic tray. That's just asking for a laceration! I'm glad you've made progress with your dog, it can be hard with dogs that weren't treated well when they were young.
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By chance is this a video of a boxer? Last time I saw one circulate, it was labeled as a video of an 'intelligent dog' but anyone with any common sense could tell the dog was practically having an anxiety attack. He was so desperate to get out of there that he practically impaled himself
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When you've already worked a 50 hour week on this pay period and tomorrow is looking like another 12-13 hour day.. I just really dread going to my job now. Being very short staffed and then some coworkers that are still there are lazy so I end up doing practically everything. I'm just sick of it. And absolutely exhausted. 🙁
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It's a rescue pittie mix named Buster.
Here's a link to the story & video. http://www.fox29.com/news/241318174-story
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I explain to owners that a crate is meant to be like your dog's own personal bedroom. They should be able to access it freely throughout the day and it isn't a place you put a dog for punishment.
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Ah, not the same video but same problem. I don't see why people think this stuff is cute. To me, this dog has severe separation anxiety +/- other behavioral issues but I'm no expert. All I see is panic and desperation. Dog's don't squeeze their bodies through gaps in crates for fun, that ish is painful.
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Some people's opinions on dog training are akin to their opinions on politics and religion, you just can't talk sense at them. I've learned that since being active with training my pup, people will give you all sorts of unsolicited advice and so much of it is questionable. No, I'm not going to kick my dog or knee him in the chest for jumping on me, literally that will just make him more hyped up. But thanks for the advice, random guy with an out of control Labrador who doesn't listen to him!
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My guy is in his crate right now by choice, nomming on a chew toy. Not only is it a positive place for him (fed there, etc) but it's also so nice not to worry what the heck he will get into/destroy/consume while we're gone.
I agree that sometimes, most likely due to poor initial training, dogs do not want to be in their crates and can hurt themselves trying to break out. And there are some people who use their crates inappropriately, like kenneling their dogs 23 hours a day. But a properly used crate is a wonderful thing 🙂
