Want to help Minmo grow strong and healthy? Then please consider donating to help out my sweet child! Can't/don't want donate? Then just sharing around is more than enough to help! Full details can be found here as well.
https://gofund.me/36794690
Tldr Minmo’s been to the vet twice, third time will be today. She’ll have an x-ray at the least which is more expensive than the last two visits. Will possibly need further treatment. I am a disabled person living off of disability payments alone which are far below the poverty line, making it hard to get by day to day without any extra expenses.
Hi! I was wondering what pet insurance you had for your dogs? I think it was you who mentioned it. If not just delete this. I recently adopted a 1 year old puppy after her owner passed away and I want to make sure im super prepared incase anything happens. My family’s oldest dog recently passed and it was expensive towards the end and it makes me nervous. Thank you so much for your time and give all your critters love from me!
Hey, sorry it took me so long to answer this, I had to ask Jack for the answer. We only have Spring covered, of the 2 dogs, with Pets Best. Addy doesn't make as much sense to insure, due to her preexisting conditions. I don't know much about PB, since Jack registered him with it. I have Shilo and Phoebe covered with Embrace pet insurance.
hey guys, so my darling son, Charles is pretty sick and i don't have a lot of money to cover the treatments he'll need and i'm so devastated; im really bad at expressing my emotions but i love this little man so much it'd mean the world if anyone has something to spare for him or even just a reblog means a lot ill even do like sketches or portraits or whatever if you donate i just really want my son to come home
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A detailed overview of this expanding landscape is available in the U.S. Pet Insurance Market Report. As veterinary care continues to modernize—integrating advanced technologies such as AI diagnostics, genetic testing, and personalized treatments—pet healthcare costs are rising. This escalation has been a core driver behind the increased adoption of pet insurance.
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Some pet owners would give a definitive answer of yes for this question. But the true answer lies behind several factors. If you are a pet owner, you likely will experience the cost of veterinary care sometime during their lifetime. There are different factors that will affect how your experience will be. Some of these factors may include the area you live in, what your pet is being treated…
So I just read your post on clients complaining about cost when coming into the clinic. I work at a small, family owned clinic and we get a lot of reviews saying we're too expensive. What would you consider high for a privately owned buisness??
That’s a good question! Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a straight answer. This post got very long, so I’m popping it behind a cut.
I am not a practice owner; I work for someone else, so I don’t have exact knowledge of how much it costs to run a business. I do know, however, that the overhead on a private veterinary practice is very high. One thing I do know is that, in order to stay open, without the owner making a cent of profit whatsoever, our practice needs to make about $3000 a day. We’re open 11 hours a day and see appointments 9 of those hours. A regular appointment is twenty minutes, so we can see three clients an hour. This is a bit of an oversimplification, since recheck appointments are less time, and involved appointments are more, but for the sake of this explanation, let’s pretend each appointment is twenty minutes. This being the case, we would see a maximum of 27 animals (without overlap, because few clients want to wait because their appointment slot was double-booked) per day.
In order to make enough money to BREAK EVEN (without the owner making a dime off of his business), we’d need each client to pay an average of $111 per visit ($3000/27). Now, this is just assuming we’re seeing appointments. No surgery or anything. Say an appointment fee is $45. That still leaves over $60 average additional expense to be added in order to make the numbers work. That comes out of vaccines, medications, diagnostic tests, etc. And, of course, surgery on our surgery days.
The point, however, isn’t the exact numbers. It’s the reality of the private clinic situation. Do you think an average of $111 per visit is expensive? According to the reality of a business standpoint, it isn’t. It doesn’t even given the owner a profit. Why in the world would you own a business, with all the stress and work behind it, without making a profit? What would be the point? I wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t do it. I doubt any of our clients would look at hours and hours of labor without any reward and say “oh, yeah, I’ll do that.”
Yet I guarantee that a huge number of our clients, and likely clients in general, would balk at the price of $111. They’d balk at the price of a $45 exam. Almost $50 just to look at an animal? Why not $30? Or $20?
I had one client once tell me that he felt the whole visit, drugs and exam and diagnostics, should be around $50. Okay. So let’s do the math on that. Mind you, if everything all together cost $50, then an animal just getting a regular check up, that wasn’t sick, would cost less. But for the sake of simplicity, let’s pretend that every animal we saw in a day needed “the works.” Which, according to this client, should cost $50.
$3000 per day at an average of $50 per visit. That would mean that we would have to see 60 clients/pets. 60 appointments in 9 hours means nine minutes per appointment.
Nine minutes for a full physical exam, full history, getting diagnostics on an animal (mind you, not all animals stay still for any of this, so this doesn’t often take two seconds, it can take 5-10 minutes on its own), running bloodwork/urinalysis, reading bloodwork, giving an animal treatments, explaining diagnoses to the client, discussing a client’s concerns, filling medications, showing how to give the medications, answering more questions, and finally ending the appointment.
Does anyone really think that doing all of that in less time than a Steven Universe episode is really possible? And if it is, then possible without making a client feel rushed, confused, and undervalued?
What about anxious, fearful, and/or aggressive animals? Is it acceptable to pin them down and sit on them to get a physical and diagnostics done? Or would it be better to go slowly, try some behavioral modification, given them time so that they whole exam isn’t traumatizing for them?
What about euthanasia appointments? Is it acceptable to rush them in nine minutes to make way for the next appointment so that the $$ quota for the day can be filled to keep the clinic doors open and the lights on?
Perhaps it’s possible to plow one’s way through a very high volume of patients given a stellar medical staff, front desk staff, amiable patients, and quick-to-grasp clients, but the reality is far from this ideal. Even with a perfect, always-on-game staff, animals and clients can and often are belligerent, difficult, and demanding of more and more time to answer repeated questions. And even if the appointments all go perfectly, where does this leave time to write up charts and call clients at home, checking in on how patients are doing?
Moving away from appointments, let’s think about surgery. Let’s think about “routine” surgery, such as the spay. This is often another contender for the “it’s too expensive!” claim.
What is a fair price for a spay? According to many clients (particularly ones seeking out low cost clinics)? Well, about $80 for a small dog. This is looking at a low cost clinic price in my area. Keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of such clinics are non-profit, getting the benefit of tax reductions and monetary donations to subsidize this price.
Where I work, we charge about $300-400. Why does it cost this much? Let me go through what’s involved in a spay.
The dog gets a full physical exam by a veterinarian who has gone through training similar (and some may argue more difficult) to what a human doctor goes through. The animal gets bloodwork done. This blood is obtained by trained veterinary technicians who need to know how to safely restrain the dog, hit a vein, draw out blood, and run this blood through a machine. These are all skills that take a good deal of practice and are not something the average joe off the street can achieve the first, second, or even third time.
The bloodwork then needs to be read by the vet, taking further knowledge and training to interpret correctly. The dog then gets sedatives and pain medications, all which have to be correctly chosen for the specific patient, correctly dosed, and correctly given. Any side effects or odd reactions need to be correctly identified and managed.
The dog gets an IV catheter. This takes further correct restraint and correct placement, more advanced skills, to achieve. IV fluids are given, which need to be appropriately chosen with the correct rate for the patient and procedure.
Induction follows with further drugs and doses that need to be carefully chosen to make the animal unconscious, at which time an endotracheal tube is placed to maintain the airway and deliver anesthetic gases to keep the patient asleep. These gases need to be titrated to keep the patient asleep but not dead. Monitoring equipment is applied to the patient and read constantly by a dedicated technician to ensure that they patient is not having a complication that can lead to injury or death. This also takes an immense amount of skill, learning, and experience.
At this time, the vet is performing the surgery. Skills needed for this include but are not limited to: choosing the right surgical tools for the size and shape of patient; cutting in the right spot; cutting with the right technique so organs are not lacerated and damaged; finding the ovaries and uterus; identifying any abnormalities with the ovaries and uterus; pulling the organs out without injuring them, causing bleeding, or injuring other organs; identifying the usual vessels that need to be tied of; choosing the right suture type and size; choosing the right knot to tie off with; performing these knots correctly multiple times; identifying vessels that need to be tied off that aren’t usually tied off; identifying bleeding during surgery; addressing any unusual bleeding correctly and safely; closing the body wall with the correct suture type, size, and suturing pattern; closing the subcutaneous tissues again with the right type of suture; closing the skin in a way that is pleasing to the client’s eye as well as surgically effective.
Then comes waking the animal up, which involves knowing when to take the ET tube out so that the animal can breathe safely. Take it out too early, and the animal may not be able to protect its airway from regurgitation. Take it out too late, and the animal may bite the tube, leading to tube becoming stuck where it should not.
Afterwards, the dog needs to be monitoring to make sure it is correctly aware, and the right temperature, right heart rate, breathing rate, etc. Then, medications to help the patient with pain and healing at home need to be correctly chosen, dosed, and administered.
During all of this, vets and techs need to be able to identify and address any of the following complications (this is list doesn’t include every complication possible): aggressive animals, low blood pressure, high blood pressure, high heart rate, low heart rate, panting, low respiratory rate, NO respiratory rate, NO heartrate, pain, dysphoria, suture failure, infection, and medication reactions.
I suppose, in the end, my answer to you, anon, is that I don’t consider ANYTHING “high” for a private veterinarian. Veterinary medicine is, considering the fact that medicine and surgery are being performed on patients who cannot speak, cannot be reasoned with, and have vastly different anatomies from our own, a very difficult and skill-based practice. Considering the level of knowledge and skill needed, and considering the fact that failure involves DEATH, I find today’s veterinary costs to be pretty cheap. Even the “high” costs.
I mean, we charge $300-400 to spay a patient who can’t talk to us, can’t be given direction, can’t tell us when things hurt, and (usually) has no health insurance.
D’you know how much it costs to “spay” a human woman, who can be asked to nicely sit in a chair while having her blood drawn? Without health insurance?
Hello, I haven't had any updates for Heidi because her appointment has been resceduled to Friday June 3, at 3:00 with Dr. Candey.
I am to give her extra blood pasma for her left eye. Her right eye is reinfected.Leigha our other Pug caugh the eye infection from Heidi, so the vet said to use the same Tobramycin drops on Leigha we are using for Heidi. Heidi got reinfected by cross contamination from using the same eye med bottle as Leigha.
Heidi's left eye is red again and has more mucous, but I don't think the cloudy/blue that was covering her cornia looks like it has gotten larger again, but I don't see any improvement either.
Heidi's ears are still infected! I don't get that. They gave her a cortisone shot last time we were there. Heidi gets Rimadyl for her eye swelling, which should also help with the swelling in her ears.
I had no idea how long treatments were going to take for Heidi's eyes. Her ears have been infected the whole time too. Maybe the infections are fighting each other? Just a guess, will ask Dr. Candey Friday.
I know Heidi is probably sick of all of it too. She lets me give her eye drops and blood plasma. Leigha takes off as soon as she sees the syringe and the eye drops come out.
Leigha's eyes are not completely clear, but there is a difference. Not as red, and not as much mucous. I will post updates, pics, and documentation after vet Friday.
I want to Thank all who have been sharing, reblogging, and retweeting for Heidi. Pray that this will e over pretty soon and that her left eye is not reinfected and those darn ear infections will go away. https://goo.gl/6fG8J5
