My rant about spaying! - Page 3

I tend to agree with this. I forego owning a vehicle or taking a trip every few months as my kits ARE my luxury. If you can't afford a pet, go volunteer at a shelter.

I don't think I can agree with this:

I got my five cats way before I could afford them. It was a very sad, dark time in my life. I don't think I could have made it without them.

Cats, for me, are a necessity.

to the OP,

do you have any low-cost spay & neuter clinics in your area? we have spay & neuter clinics here in the summer/fall and it's free.

but yes, altering is expensive.

I understand that animals do help us through difficult times in our lives..
However, I do think its selfish to acquire 5 animals when they are going without adequate nutrition and healthcare simply because you need to have them.
(If you are foregoing items and other of your own needs so that you can feed and vet your cats, then this is different...I agree with that)

I found ways to cut costs without sacrificing anything, such as calling for coupons, buying in bulk, utilizing Petco's buy 10 get 1 program, and asking for items on FreeCycle....etc. .....etc....

However if I were to wait until I could find ways to afford them, I would probably never have gotten them. There was no way for me to go on cat forums and learn about money-saving pet care tips without having cats first.

Sometimes people have the moral calling to take on more cats than then can afford. There had been way too many unfortunate times when such scenarios evolve into cat-herding. However, if it is done right, it can save many animals from euthansia.

Same with children......if people wait until they can TRULY know every cost-saving measure in regardance of children, then people would never have children in the first place.

Back to topic: I did not know how to afford to spay my cats. I spent months worrying about them. Then one day a friend called and told me the Animal Shelter was offering spay rebates. I jumped on the opportunity the day I heard it.

I missed the cost-of-vet-degree debate, but since I came up with the 200,000 dollar figure, let me explain why it is true...

I go to a school with a good veterinary program. It's estimated cost of attendance for Undergrad is 21,000 a year. The vet program is more expensive. So for four years of pre-vet school, that is 84K+. You are unlikely to get scholarships in a field that is that competitive, and you will only get government aid if your family is poor. Ohio is one of the worst states to go to a public college, because we have a terrible governor and little state funding.
If you get your DVM degree at this same school, you can expect to spend a little more, at least 100k, on those four years, because while grad students often get paid to go to school, this is not usually true of vet programs or MD programs or whatever. So, if you hardly spend any money and have a part-time job to support yourself, you will come out of school with 184k in debt, from this school, according to their estimated cost of attendance. Now remember that your loans from each year have been collecting interest that whole time, and you will have a very very difficult time coming out of school with less than 200k in debt, and if you say, bought a car or a computer, you will have more.

If you cannot afford to spay/neuter your cat (I don't mean at full cost, I used a low-cost clinic too) you cannot afford that cat.

I can definitely vouch for that. That is TRUE. The same situations happen in graduate school.

Also, almost every single diagnosing machine costs half a million.

And I forgot to say that 30,000 US dollars a YEAR for college is not expensive at all, it would be maybe a little expensive for a public in-state school. There is a public school here in Ohio that charges more than 30,000 a year. If you went out-of-state or to a private school, 30,000 would be cheap, although you'd be more likely to get a couple scholarships. It is currently going up about 7% a year in this state, at all of the public schools. (Out-of-state tuition-only at my new school would be 19,000 a year) How is it cheaper to go to school in the US??? All the websites of schools in Canada are way way cheaper.
Although the Uni of Sask. charges 6,500 a year for the veterinary program, that is still alot less expensive.

Well we had to get married for educational grants in the U.S.

The U.S. government cares more about marriages than Canada, I would persume.

In order to get education grants in America, you must either be dependent on your parents who do not make enough money to be expected to pay for you to go to school (such as my family, we are below poverty line and so I get a few, but it usually only covers half or less of expenses), or you must be independent student, which you do by being married, having children, being a veteran, or turning 23. If your parents do not live in the US, then you would have to become an independent student through one of those ways to get money for school. The same is true for kids whose parents won't pay for school, and thus they can't get any help, they tell you to wait till you're 23, get married, or have a kid. You don't get any extra money for being married for school, it was just that you couldn't until you were categorized as an independent student, which you achieved by being married. It has nothing to do with the government caring about marriage any more or less.

You said a mouthful! You are SO right! FEW vets are in business to help animals (I DO belive mine is!) and MOST are just in it for the money - that is why they are still pushing annual vacs!

Spaying is always good, but neutering is much cheaper. People who can't afford spaying might be better to have male cats to begin with.

That was what I did with the first two.

That is true but I believe the rules are there for other reasons which we might not ever comprehend.

Perhaps it is becuase that is what they were taught was necessary for optimal health in college? It's easy to say that everyone should IMMEDIATELY change their standards to fit new research findings, but you forget that it takes time for the information alone to reach people, let alone it becoming standard practice.

There are vets who still won't do pediatric spay/neuter because they were taught in college that it causes problems later in life 30 years ago. You shouldn't expect even more recent research about yearly vaccinations to cause standard practices everywhere to change overnight. Every vet out there doesn't have the time to read up on each and every new study finding, and it will take a while for non-yearly vaccs to become the norm.

It sure doesn't mean that the evil vets are out for your wallet either. They have bills (rent/home, business, machinery used to monitor your pet's health, medicines which may be used for animals but are still people-priced, etc.), loans upon loans, and their families to worry about (food, transport, school supplies and other things if they have kids, pet supplies if they have pets, etc).

Most vets DO love animals. If they just took care of your animals for free, they'd be working by kerosene lamp with a flame-sterilized scalpel and a small pile of bleach rags in a cardboard box which doubled as their home and then you'd be complaining that they didn't look professional/legitimate.

I am greatful my is $25 or $50.

Um, a vet's education costs $100,000-$200,000 or more. Average starting salary for a vet is about $50,000, and that's if the vet is practicing in a major US city (where cost of living is very high - e.g. a one-bedroom apartment costs well over $1000 a month). How does that translate into "in it for the money"?

I know many, many vets. The young ones who are just a few years out of school are mostly struggling to make ends meet while paying back crazy loans. The only young vets who aren't truly stressed about their personal finances are the few whose spouses have very good paying jobs and minimal educational debt, or whose parents could afford to pay for their education outright. The vets I know who are in their 40's and 50's generally live comfortable upper-middle-class lives (as befits one with such a level of education), but they're not rich. The only vets I know who are truly wealthy are those who own very large practices, the kind that only exist in major cities. There are very, very few vets who make that kind of money.

But having said that, of course a vet practice is a business and making money is necessary for any business, otherwise the business cannot exist! Of course all vets and their staff care a great deal about animals. But they also care a great deal about other things, like their own ability to sleep inside a building and eat food on a regular basis. Never mind stuff like purchasing equipment for the hospital and paying the rent/mortgage for the hospital's building!

Would anyone here be able to afford to work their jobs if they did not get paid to do them? I know I couldn't! I am a vet tech (unlicensed) and I work 12 hour shifts and it's hard physical labor - lifting 100# dogs, wrangling cats who have no problem clawing me to shreds, risking exposure to zoonotic diseases, dealing with more vomit and diarrhea than I'd care to discuss...and for that, I earn a wage that amounts to roughly 50% of my area's average household income. I love my job, but I don't know anyone who is saintly enough to do a job that is this smelly and carries this kind of a daily risk of serious injury and leaves you this bone-tired at the end of the day, without the promise of some financial compensation!

Bottom line is, vets work. Vet techs work, kennel attendents work, receptionists work - just like you work at your job. And they deserve to be paid for their work, just like you do! And just as your place of work has clients (or donors, or taxpayers) who are ultimately responsible for paying your salary, so too are you responsible for paying the salaries of those who work at the businesses whose services you use. It's the way the economy works and the veterinary profession is certainly not powerful enough to suspend the rules of economics!

You know, really no other job gets accused of doing it just for the money... the career I plan to have will be for the love of it, but there is no way I could go through the schooling it takes (PhD) and do it for free. I would be not only homeless but heavily in debt also.

Asking vets to treat pets for free is similar to your boss asking you to take a pay cut just because.

There may be a few out there who do it for the money, but if you put yourself through school for that long just for the money why would you become a vet, where really you're only gonna be upper-middle-class if that, when you could become a billionaire plastic surgeon just as easily?

Amen! Well said.

That about sums it up! Really, why are vets considered so "special" in this regard? Everyone does their job for the money, LOL.