Whelping Problem! - Page 6

SS that C-section estimate is absolutely CRAZY!  I've NEVER heard of half the items listed on it, and I've had my share of C-sec's in the years!  I'd definitely find another vet, and never go there again!

CMills, it's pretty much the ONLY 'game in town' if you have an after-hours emergency, or an emergency on weekends. My regular vet doesn't do surgery on Saturday, and they close at 1 pm. Other clinics we contacted said the same thing. They get away with these ridiculous prices because they KNOW they have you by the short hairs!  Believe me, we checked all the other options we could think of!!

I have an emergency handbook on the front desk, for people who might be looking after the kennel for me when I'm away. It says in BIG BOLD type to only contact the  Veterinary Emergency Clinic of York Region if there is NO OTHER CHOICE!  I've had a dog that had a pretty nasty bite injury and just bandaged it up and left it until the next morning to avoid being taken to the cleaners by these thieves! (The wounds were not bleeding, and it was a Sunday evening.)

Jenni, I am amazed at how lucky she got, and I think she knows it, too. That dead pup was a monster BTW: 19.9 oz. It had been dead awhile: the tongue was green, and sticking out of the mouth, and the skin looked like it had been scalded.

K. thought Gwen was in labour for two nights before this, but there was no visible discharge. She was just panting and very restless. I wonder if this was due to that first pup dying?

Oh, and one thing K. has decided for sure after going through this...this is DEFINITELY Gwen's LAST litter!

So, back when this all started, around noon on the 14th, I called the veterinary E.R. and left a message on their answering machine.

Just now, I picked up a phone message from them: a youngish female voice told me NOT TO WORRY about the dark discharge, that it was 'perfectly normal'!

Not in any universe I've ever lived in!  Even in human obstetrics, it means the foetus is in distress!! 

My opinion of this clinic just went down another few notches... 

A couple of years ago, I was looking after a friend's dogs while she was away, and her mini-pin was attacked by her Shiloh shepherd. This happened on a Sunday, of course... (don't ask for details, or you will get a rant that will go on for several pages...this IDIOT woman is now an ex-friend, and the mini-pin died a violent death!)

So, I'm sitting in the ER with this tiny little dog that's been mauled by a HUGE dog, and get a close-up view of how the ER handles triage, a concept I'm very familiar with, as a retired nurse.

A dog comes in that's had surgery on its anal glands, and is having trouble pooping. They take it in before me.

Another dog comes in with a mysterious case of lameness. It goes back to be seen by the vet, while I sit there and fume!

If someone had AT LEAST drawn bloodwork on the mini-pin, and we were waiting for the results, I would have understood the wait. But no, we were just sitting there in the waiting room, cooling our heels...

Sorry for all the posts,but I am blocked from editing the one I want to change...

Jenni, K. deserves more credit than we are giving her. It turns out she was constantly on the phone with the veterinary ER, and they kept telling her to wait and give the bitch a chance to have the puppies without assistance. She was also on FB with a veterinarian in Alberta, Canada, and was getting advice from her.

When they told her to bring Gwen in, she did so right away.

I still think they waited too long, but I wasn't actually there with the bitch to see what was going on. Every time I'd go downstairs, Gwen would hear me at the door, and bark, and she needed peace and quiet. That was the main reason they asked me to stay away.

So glad Gwen and the puppies are doing well.   Whelping is such a nail bitting affair when things don't go according to plan.   I can't imagine having this stress on top of personal surgery.

Give everyone one a big hug from Texas.   

I lost my 9 month old kitten two weeks ago. She was having extreme trouble breathing and collapsed. The emergency vet told me they would save her. I paid 3,200 and at the end of the day my beautiful kitten had to be put down because they discovered she had a congenital heart disease. They tested her for every possible thing before doing the x ray and ultrasound, aka racked up the charges as much as possible. They charged me 100$ an hour for her to be in the oxygen tank. The list of items was over 30 total. They also convinced me to use care credit which "has no interest" I got paid the next day and paid off that card because in reality it has 26% interest if not paid in full in 6 months. 

 

I am 24 and spent that much money to try to save a kitten I only had for 7 months. I can't believe an adult couple would risk their dog and puppies lives rather than immediately go to the vet for a few thousand dollars. 

Vets depend on people who panic. If the owners had been better prepared, the dog would not have needed to go out into deadly cold nor jeopardize new born pups in extreme cold. A routine exam should have revealed a congenital heart problem. Too bad the kitten had to be put through so much before relieving it of the suffering it must have been going through. The vets made out, though, in both cases.

But it's awful that vets will take advantage of emotionally compromised folks & run up bills doing "every test" before they do the basic stuff. My mom left me in charge of her cat when she moved back to Hawai'i, & left the vet her credit card # & authorization to use it, as her cat was older, sickly, & would not, probably, survived the trip. The cat almost immediately became very ill, & the vet took her for a visit, refused to euthanize her as I requested, & instead kept her & maxed out my moms card & then called me to pick her up, even though she was seizing & unconscious, drooling & vomiting & aspirating it, because no further charges could be put on my moms card. $6000.00 of charges, for what I don't know, & I had to take the cat to another vet to her her PTS. I think that's despicable. Of course, my mom was angry with me. But the vet wouldn't even let me see the poor cat, & told me she had discussed her care with my mom on the phone. Turned out the only communication my mom got from the vet was a request for another card number. The moral to the story? Don't blindly trust your vet, because your pet will pay the price, ultimately.

jackie harris

I told K. that if it had been MY bitch, I would have talked my vet into letting me have some oxytocin, which I only would have used under a vet's direction, of course. K. responded that in 15 years of breeding, and assisting with the whelping of at least 20 litters for both her own dogs and friend's dogs, this is the FIRST time she's ever had a problem like this!

I think she's been extraordinarily lucky. My first whelping experience (assisting a friend) was a baptism by fire, with a large pup holding up the procedings for over 3 hours, then the second last pup being born so weak it couldn't suckle. My friend was on the Leerburg site at 2 am, trying to figure out how to tube-feed it, while I ran off to the store for goat's milk because the milk she'd had on hand was already sour!

Oh, and we were told to expect only 2 or 3 pups. By the time the bitch was done, we had NINE! We lost the last two, because they were just in there too damn long...

I've had to draw the line a couple of times with vets that wanted to try every test in the book, and run up an enormous bill. In the one case, the dog was very sick after getting out of the yard, and eating something she shouldn't have (never found out what). The vet thought she might have Addison's or possibly liver cancer. Meanwhile the dog was totally recovered and eating just fine. I said I'd bring her in for her shots in a month's time, and he could do more tests then if he wanted to.

Guess what? He drew blood, and all the blood values were back to NORMAL!! The liver is one of the few organs that can heal itself. All she needed was time to recover from whatever it was that had made her so sick.

She lived to be 14 1/2. At the end of her life, I again had to draw the line, when she was having trouble walking, and a vet wanted to refer us to a veterinary neurologist for tests. I said 'no'.  It was the right thing to do: she died in her sleep just 3 months later.

I have had nothing but bad experiences with the VSH franchise in North Carolina.  Veterinary Specialty Hospitals are in my experience to be avoided as they will not do required stitches or procedures until one of their "specialists" is available to do the procedure no matter how simple sometimes.  The VSH folks milk you for all you are worth and when the money is gone they are done.