Man Operates On His Own Dog Because Vet Too Expensive

[Parkeyre]

http://www.asylum.com.au/2010/02/09/man-op...z00020000000001

A man who claimed he could not afford medical care for his dog has been charged with illegally operating on the animal.

Alan MacQuattie, from Barrington, in the north-eastern state of Rhode Island, removed a cyst from the leg of his 14-year-old labrador-mix .

But professional veterinarians had to operate again after an infection developed following the botched job.

E.J. Finocchio, a veterinarian and president of the Rhode Island Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in the US, called the surgery a "heinous crime".

Court records show that Mr MacQuattie pleaded no contest last week to misdemeanour charges of animal cruelty and unauthorised practice of veterinary medicine.

But he told a television reporter that he did not think there was anything cruel about what he had done.

Hear from MacQuattie, after the jump.

Edited February 13, 2010 by Bonnie Parker

[Esky the husky]

I hope they took that poor dog off him

If he won't pay for vet bills he doesn't deserve to own an animal

[spottychick]

I cant tell much from that article - and my pc connection is too slow to wait for the video to download - but things are not always as simple as you think Esky.

For example, I spent over a thousand dollars (all of my emergency money) on vets when my dog developed a limp. I consulted THREE different vets all of whom got the diagnosis wrong after charging me $100s of dollars a visit for x-rays etc. So by the time he started to really detiorate I had NO MONEY left to spend on vets. I desperately rang several vets all of whom basically told me to get back in touch when I had the money because they don't accept any sort of payment after the event. They only take money up front. WHich I did not have.

The one vet who did accept payments I had already seen and they diagnosed bone cancer (which later turned out to be completely wrong) and merely sent me home with some painkillers and Vitamins. And I was still paying them off for the last consult making it even more difficult to raise the money to see any other vet (I needed to get a second opinion and find someone who knew how to treat cancer).

I eventually scraped together another chunk of money to see a new vet for yet another attempt to diagnose him and have an operation done (if needed). As it turned out he did need an operation (for an aggresssively spreading tumor in his muscles) but half way through the operation they realised it was all TOO LATE and he was PTS.

Is all that my fault??? I tried everything I could. Over a 2 - 3 month period I spent nearly $3,000 on vets, treatments and drugs and drove all round Tassie to see vets in an effort to save him - and I would have been happy to spend whatever it took but no vet would treat him until I had the money first.

I wouldn't do what that guy did but i certainly sympathise with the idea that you have a dog you love dearly in need of help and you can't afford to pay the vets up front. And I'm sorry, but I don't have a great regard for vets after this experience - barring the one vet practice who eventually AT LEAST got the diagnosis right and treated my beautiful boy (and me) with a bit of respect and compassion.

[poochmad]

I cant tell much from that article - and my pc connection is too slow to wait for the video to download - but things are not always as simple as you think Esky.

For example, I spent over a thousand dollars (all of my emergency money) on vets when my dog developed a limp. I consulted THREE different vets all of whom got the diagnosis wrong after charging me $100s of dollars a visit for x-rays etc. So by the time he started to really detiorate I had NO MONEY left to spend on vets. I desperately rang several vets all of whom basically told me to get back in touch when I had the money because they don't accept any sort of payment after the event. They only take money up front. WHich I did not have.

The one vet who did accept payments I had already seen and they diagnosed bone cancer (which later turned out to be completely wrong) and merely sent me home with some painkillers and Vitamins. And I was still paying them off for the last consult making it even more difficult to raise the money to see any other vet (I needed to get a second opinion and find someone who knew how to treat cancer).

I eventually scraped together another chunk of money to see a new vet for yet another attempt to diagnose him and have an operation done (if needed). As it turned out he did need an operation (for an aggresssively spreading tumor in his muscles) but half way through the operation they realised it was all TOO LATE and he was PTS.

Is all that my fault??? I tried everything I could. Over a 2 - 3 month period I spent nearly $3,000 on vets, treatments and drugs and drove all round Tassie to see vets in an effort to save him - and I would have been happy to spend whatever it took but no vet would treat him until I had the money first.

I wouldn't do what that guy did but i certainly sympathise with the idea that you have a dog you love dearly in need of help and you can't afford to pay the vets up front. And I'm sorry, but I don't have a great regard for vets after this experience - barring the one vet practice who eventually AT LEAST got the diagnosis right and treated my beautiful boy (and me) with a bit of respect and compassion.

That's so sad, sorry you had to go through this.

Regarding the article, I think it's pretty sad the man felt like he couldn't afford to take his dog to the vet; although, I thought in America, you could take your vet to the RSPCA (or whatever it's called in the US) if you couldn't afford to pay?

[Rysup]

I have mixed feelings on this. I would like to know how he "removed" the cyst. There are small things I will do at home, that I wont go to a vet for to be charged $50 just to walk in the door.

My old vet used to allow you to have an account and pay it off. He was great. But these days vets like this are far and few in between. And you have to go into debt to treat your pets if you dont have a lot of spare money.

[Bluefairy]

Spottychick ~ This pretty much why I had to put my 11 month old pup to sleep too. They didn't know what was wrong other than testing showed cancer, they couldn't find where it was, without expensive testing we no longer could afford (had already used all our life saving to get this far) as the pup was still being sick and so unhappy, we thought it would be kinder to let her go. I know have pet insurance so I will never be in that position again.

As for the OP....in America they have free vet clinic's, so there is NO excuse the man had operating on his dog. Thats just cruel.

Bluefairy

[spottychick]

THanks poochmad - It's something I'm still struggling to come to terms with.

Sorry about your puppy bluefairy. Cancer's a terrible thing isnt it! Poor little thing

In my dogs case tho, part of the problem with the vets is that they didn't do any testing (until I got to the 4th vet who did a barrage of blood and tissue tests). I had to find out for myself what they should have done. All they did was x-rays and in the case of the first vet I saw she only did that because I insisted. SHe told me it was "just arthritis - what do you expect in an old dog" but when I said "So are you sure it's not cancer causing this?" she sort of smirked and said well you cant be SURE of that. I had to ask her how we could be sure and she said "You'd need to take x-rays" in this "who would bother" tone of voice. I told her to take some x-rays. She took 2, in the wrong area as it turned out and charged me $400.

Apart from the x-ray bit she initially spent all of about 5 minutes looking at my dog. And when I went back to pick him up she was more concerned with telling me off for parking in the wrong spot than she was with talking to me about my dog. She sat behind the counter and said "There's no cancer, it just shows arthritis. Here's some NSAIDS and you should buy some joint powder" but wouldn't show me the x-rays and had no other suggestions about what to do if he didn't stop limping. It took her 2 months to release the x-rays to another vet (after I paid another $30!!!) by which time they were useless. THe other vet said the x-rays didn't even show any arthritis, just a healthy wrist bone.

Anyway - like I said. I'm still recovering from all this.

[Tilly]

When my older boy was sick (stopped urinating) we rushed him to emergency on a Friday night. After about 5 hours he was discharged and I took him home. Next morning he still wasn't ok so I took him to my local vet. He took one look at him, drained his bladder and said to get him back up to the hospital. When I took him back to the hospital they required a $400 deposit but because I had paid about $800 that morning the transaction wouldn't go through ($1,000 limit) - they wouldn't accept him until I could give them the $400 even though it was in my account I couldn't get the money out ... I ended up ringing around until I eventually got onto my mother (at the hairdressers) and she was able to pay over the phone on her credit card. He spent the weekend in their ICU unit where they took x-rays, ultra-sounds, blood tests and urine samples to grow bacteria ... and they still couldn't find anything wrong with him. When he was transferred to the specialists on the Monday where they operated and found a suspect prostate (despite previously being told his prostate was fine). He was desexed on the table and then spent another week in their wards where I had to visit him regularly so they could medicate him, attend to his dressing, feed him, walk him etc (he was getting really cranky by that stage). All up it cost over $4,600 and they couldn't positively tell me what was wrong with him. Now ... if he is confined for any length of time (more then an hour) and can't have free access to toileting then he has trouble urinating for days afterwards.

The last time he was sick I had taken him to the vet for a suspected ear infection .... only to have him collapse within about 10 minutes of getting home. I rang the vet and told them he had collapsed and I couldn't pick him up to get him back to the vet. I check him for ticks, vet checked him for ticks, took blood samples and then diagnosed a middle ear infection which was affecting his balance - when asked if it could be a tick he said he wasn't displaying the normal symptoms for a tick so that was ruled out. Over the next couple of days he was going downhill - the vet kept telling me it was an inner ear infection and it would take about 3 days to start to get better. I took him to a second vet on the Sunday (with the help of a friend to lift him in and out of the car so I could get him to the vet) to have his bladder drained because he hadn't gone to the toilet since he had collapsed ... and during the consult we found a tick. He was immediately given the tick syrum and they wanted to hospitalise him - I refused because it was too stressful for him (and there wasn't someone with him 24/7 at that clinic so I would rather be with him incase anything were wrong). Within 2 days he was back from the brink and continued to improve. When I contacted the initial vet to let them know a tick had been found ... the comment was "we thought it would be a tick" WTF - if they suspected a tick why didn't they say so and we could have shaved him then and there to find it and not let him go on for another day or 2 when it could have been too late!!!! That couple of days cost just over $1,100 - I had to borrow money from a friend because I just didn't have that sort of money laying around.

I did get comments from my mother about wasting that sort of money on the dog when I could be using it to pay off the house ...

We did look at pet insurance but a lot require you to have the money upfront to pay the bills and then reclaim it back ... and then there is a lot of times when they don't pay out anyway. Problem is if you don't have the cash up front ....

We do have a dog account with ING Direct where money is deposited regularly but that can still take 24hrs to come over into my other account. Thankfully we have a joint account used to pay household bills and the house repayments - and this used to have an extra 1,000 or so in it to get us through the initial payment.

Edited February 14, 2010 by Tilly

[Pointees]

I can't believe he did that!

It is hard to pay vet bills when you don't have all the money in the world... But if your dog needs something removed... Then get it done... If its something small, ear infection, small open wounded, I'm sure a number of people are able to attend to it... Well, most people on this site anyway!

We lost our GSD, Kelly, to the dread Cancer in May last year... Basically, the vet did a blood test on the Saturday, we got told she had cancer, we didn't want to know how much, where or how long she had, so we figured worst came to worst we would put her to sleep.. She was then PTS on the Tuesday as she started bleeding out of her ear, and nothing could stop it, she became ill looking, and had no energy...

RIP Kelly. Best pound dog we have ever had.

[poochmad]

Aww, all of your stories are so sad!

So, so, sorry you had to through all of that. Hugs to you all.

[Wolfclan]

The worst part is that different vets charge different prices for the same treatment.

We had a wonderful vet in Ballarat and because we had been going to them for so long we had an account. Initially records were kept on a card and our particular vet had trouble keeping up with his accounting, so that when he did get around to it he would quite often knock bits off. Sometimes we waited 6 months for a bill. once it went on the computer not only did the prices go up but the bills came regularly. However, he knew wolfhounds where a lot of vets didn't know much about them at that time, so we were very lucky. At one time we had 11, and were breeding as well, so the bills were quite high at times.

Then we moved down here to Blairgowrie and were given the name of a vet clinic that were not only good and caring, but didn't charge the earth. Lucky again! The only trouble we have here is that the surgery etc could do with more space to cater for big dogs. Only 2 dogs now, but we have every faith in our vets, thank goodness!!

I don't bother taking a dog back to have stitches out and I've had plenty of practice with that, but if I couldn't afford to pay the vet for anything else then I don't think I would have a dog.

Funny isn't it, how a lot people that don't have a dog (or cat) think those of us that pay out so much money to treat ours, are mad. They don't know what pleasure our pets give us, and what unconditional love!

[stormie]

The worst part is that different vets charge different prices for the same treatment.

This happens in all industries. You pay different prices for things at McDonalds or Woolworths, depending where you are. Things are this way because that's what the public have chosen - we chose this by the governments we vote in.

By law, vets aren't allowed to all get together and work out pricing so they are all the same - if this happened, there would be no element of competition and prices would only go up, because people would have no choice. The fact that vets can and do charge different prices means that people are free to shop around to find a price they are happy with and generally, prices are kept as low as realistically possible because they need to compete with near by vets.

I'm sorry, but I don't have much sympathy for that man. If he couldn't afford to have the surgery, then he should have just left the cyst on. I see no point in potentially risking the dog's life to do 'home surgery', to remove the lump.

[indigirl]

Jeez some of your stories are really bad My local vet has no issues treating the dog than having you pay the bill off afterwards. I recently posted about Reg the 12yr old golden who ate ratsack. His owner has a bill of $1200 and is paying it off. The vet made 3 house calls, plus came in afterhours to give Reg a blood transfusion without any money ever changing hands. He billed her after Reg died and is fine with her paying it off. Makes me realise how lucky I am to have a vet who does not demand the money upfront.

[Miss B]

On ACA last night they did a comparison of vet fees between a few different surgeries. Common procedures like desexing came back with up to $300 plus differences in cost for dogs of the same gender and weight. I was quite astonished at how massive some of the price differences were but also very glad to see my vet is on the more reasonable end of the scale.

Not all vets offer the same level of service though. Some include pre-anaesthetic blood testing, others don't. Some include intravenous fluids, others don't. Some use a better quality anaesthetic and have all patients monitered throughout the surgery by trained nurses... others don't. The most important thing is to find out not just the price but what exactly you are getting for your money

[Nekhbet]

I tell you what if I had an anaesthetic machine I would have done my dogues op myself

$500 today, $500 last week

my whole pay for another 2 weeks gone. I have to see if anything is left over, thank god I keep the freezer full with discounted meats and veges

[all that glitters]

I tell you what if I had an anaesthetic machine I would have done my dogues op myself

$500 today, $500 last week

my whole pay for another 2 weeks gone. I have to see if anything is left over, thank god I keep the freezer full with discounted meats and veges

What happened to him ??

[Nekhbet]

it's in general Shelle, lump removal and test for cancer