Vet Care - Need To Change?

[Muttaburra]

Yes blacklabrador, same happened to me, went from top vet in the town, to a raw recruit. Anyway he pushed the ear scope thing quite far down the cats ear (cat had sore ear) once and the cat put up with it. After he had decided what was wrong and what the treatment was he put the earscope down again, he was pretty rough in my opinion.

Anyway as soon as he had removed the earscope, the cat thought about it for a few seconds then socked it to him, I don't know if you've ever seen a cat punch with it's paw, well thats what he did, and whacked the guys arm a few times, unfortunately he had his big claws extended at the time. ;)

Cat then stopped and just sat there, deciding that justice had been done.

[blacklabrador]

oh dear Aber. Vets don't always understand cats do they??

I am lucky enough to have a "cat vet" who specialises in felines. She doesnt do other animals at all. In fact if a dog walked through the surgery doors I think the resident fatty, Rupert, would have a few biffs to give . It is refreshing to have a vet that understands the species entirely.

[noisymina]

;)

Yes, Aber - I can just see it.

A bit of Cat-justice. ;)

[petaj]

I know this does not contribute to the topic at hand, I just wanted to say that I never meant to offend anyone with the comments I posted. I'm sorry if it came off this way, it is hard to always express things properly on the net and I would hate for people to feel that I am at all contributing to unfriendliness in a community. I must obviously have a habit of taking comments the wrong way so I just wanted to apologise

I would say teenagers don't make good vets, since it takes 5 years to complete the course, lol! Like noisymina said, manner is definitely important in judging experience as we have only about 4 highschool-leavers and several 30 and 40+ year olds in third year that are gonna be just as inexperienced. I honestly wouldn't want to take my pet to a new graduate - I've heard lots of horror stories (probably why the people telling them are now lecturers, lol)! The pet owners really suffer from the current vet curriculum - instead of doing more useful things like studying behaviour to try to prevent so many dogs getting dumped etc, they make us sit exams for important things like farming economics

Apology and rant done!

Cheers

Edited June 12, 2006 by petaj

[noisymina]

I know this does not contribute to the topic at hand, I just wanted to say that I never meant to offend anyone with the comments I posted. I'm sorry if it came off this way, it is hard to always express things properly on the net and I would hate for people to feel that I am at all contributing to unfriendliness in a community. I must obviously have a habit of taking comments the wrong way embarrass.gif so I just wanted to apologise smile.gif

Cheers

I reckon you're cool.

The written communication bit can be a quite a learning curve at times - for me too.

edited for gramma hehe

Edited June 12, 2006 by noisymina

[zayda_asher]

I know this does not contribute to the topic at hand, I just wanted to say that I never meant to offend anyone with the comments I posted. I'm sorry if it came off this way, it is hard to always express things properly on the net and I would hate for people to feel that I am at all contributing to unfriendliness in a community. I must obviously have a habit of taking comments the wrong way so I just wanted to apologise

No problems... As Noisy said it takes a bit to get used to written "conversation" and its something we are all passionate about!

Dan

[Muttaburra]

Oh dear, sorry Petaj, I didn't realize you were studying Vetinary Science. My comments were more to emphasise how it can be a big jump to go from a Vet like mine who was renowned in the area for his cat expertise, to someone new and new to being a Vet who just didn't seem to have the right "touch" with cats. The treatment and eardrops all worked fine by the way.

[petaj]

You have nothing to apologise for, Abergavenny! I never took offence to anything you said

I was just saying that I am worried about how I'll do when I graduate, because I don't feel that the course is really preparing us very well, and I can definitely understand that pet owners would have similar concerns.

And you can get people in the course that for instance are solely interested in treating cattle etc, but employment may lead them elsewhere and they can still end up handling everything like cattle! The stories I could tell so far ...

I never meant to make everyone feel like they had to walk on eggshells!

[Muttaburra]

Ah, that's good, just checking to make sure I didnt have "foot in mouth disease"

One of the country vets I used to take him to, was a farm animal vet and definitely did not like cats, he was ok though and gave the starving students (like me) discounts.

[zayda_asher]

I was just saying that I am worried about how I'll do when I graduate, because I don't feel that the course is really preparing us very well, and I can definitely understand that pet owners would have similar concerns.

If you are worried about it then I am sure you will be fine... How do I figure that? Its the people that worry about things like this that go out and keep learning for themselves, continue to keep up with education and don't think they already know everything straight out of uni! Good attitude to have!

Good luck!

Dan

[noisymina]

If you are worried about it then I am sure you will be fine... How do I figure that? Its the people that worry about things like this that go out and keep learning for themselves, continue to keep up with education and don't think they already know everything straight out of uni! Good attitude to have!

Quite true, I second that.

The one main reason I wanted to change vets was because of attitude - the other things were add-ons that just re-inforced the impression that a change was needed. In a community where people "talk", this is not going to bode well for the future of the business. It is not good business sense to walk into a new business that relies on customer loyalty etc - and immediately increase prices, without notice, before most of the "customers" have even met you!

If the previous vet, for instances, increased his charges and did it "nicely" (which he would have,'cause that was what he was like), I would not have even considered changing. I would have considered him well worth it.

Can't say I'm happy with him selling out - BUT he did tell me it was coming - and he did send a letter out to everyone telling them. And the new one did what?

People, in general, are pretty tolerant and forgiving - specially if the heart is in the right place, if some thought is given to things etc. Yeh, you will get the odd one, but overall, that is the case.

By the way - this one we just left was not a young, newly qualified kid on the block - he would have a good 15-20 years experience under his belt - he just hasn't learned much from it.