I have had similar things happen to me TWICE now with one of my dogs.
The first vet - Sadie was probably around two when we had the problem. I took her in for her general exam and shots, since she had had a problem with her back about 6 months earlier, I also asked the vet to check her back. She had some slight discomfort, but instead of advising me to give her steroids and crate rest (most common treatment), the vet said that Sadie needed surgery on her back now. I asked if we could try the steroids and crate rest, her response was something along the lines of, "We can't just keep giving her steroids, if you can't afford the surgery, you shouldn't have a dog. We can take her right now and get her a home that will actually take care of her.". I was livid. I snapped right back at her that I can afford my dog, that I had the money saved up for the surgery should it need to happen (it's about $5000 and common for dachshunds), but that there was no way in he** that I was going to let some bitch of a vet perform a surgery on my dog that could potentially paralyze her. As I was leaving, I looked back at her, kind of laughed and said "Seriously? You thought that I would let you do that surgery on her? She'd go to Guelph.".
The look on her and my mother's faces were priceless. My mom paid for me (because I had stormed out to the car, I couldn't say all that and then just casually walk up to pay, lol).
I wrote a letter to the owner of the clinic. He had looked after our pets for 15 years at that point and was a wonderful man. However, during that time he had also opened up another clinic and built a new building for that one. It had lost it's personal feel. I truly did expect to get some sort of response, but I didn't get anything. I never went back to that clinic - my mom did, but they made sure to never give her that vet.
The second time was actually less than a year ago. Sadie had an innie vulva from being spayed too early, as a result she was constantly getting UTIs - one about every 3-6 months... since she was about 7 months old. It's hard to tell with her for a couple of reasons, 1) she's so low to the ground that you can't see if she's actually peeing or just dribbling, 2) she marks outside, a lot, so it's not abnormal for her to "pee" 5 times on a walk.
We went to visit Mike's family up north over a weekend, on the way we had to stop at a hotel for the night. Long story short, Sadie ended up peeing in the bathtub there and there was blood in it. We knew it was a UTI but there were no vets open then, the front desk said there wasn't an emergency vet and when we got to where we were going no vets would take us in because we weren't regular patients. So she had to wait until we got back early Tuesday morning. The second the vet's office opened I called them. They said they had an appointment for a week later... seriously!? A week later for a dog that's peeing blood!? I managed to convince them to let me drop her off and take a look at her when they had a chance. I got the call go to pick her up 8 hours later. This is what happened:
- they only let her out to pee twice (once was the collection as soon as we got there)
- the prescribed the wrong antibiotic
- the prescribed a food that contained numerous allergens for her
- later found out that they actually never did an exam
- they never did the culture that I asked for
- refused to do xrays because they didn't believe my suspicion on stones
- this was the second time that I had an emergency with them and they didn't want me to bring her in (first one she had three grand mal seizures in a row, she's epileptic)
Less than a month later, guess what. She had another infection. Lucky for us, by this time we had started seeing another vet at a different clinic for Stan. I called them and asked them if I could bring her in in the next few days - they had me bring her in within the hour! I seriously love that vet. As soon as the vet examined her she wanted to do xrays because.... she felt something in her bladder. She had three GIANT stones in there, easily felt through her an exam, and she said that at the very least her bladder would have felt like a bag of sand a month ago - but she probably had the stones for quite some time. We scheduled surgery for 2 weeks later to remove them - again, if the other vet had bothered to do the exam in the first place, they could have been broken up with ultrasonic technology and her bladder could have been flushed, however they were now too big for that to work.
I didn't do anything about the last one. My focus was on getting my dog better first. I did post something on vetratings and filled all the dog boards I'm on with her story, but nothing else.
Oh, it's been 8 months since we switched vets and they still refuse to switch her records over.
These threads have been merged, because posting duplicate threads violates the 
