I agree Tri with you, the majority of them aren't but as in all walks of life you do get the bad eggs.
He is a lovely vet, one of the old school. He works very closely on the BVA general comittee also so keeps up with all the best practice.Wouldn's swap him for the world and worth his weight in gold.

Can I just diverse slightly from topic though it is still concering vet bills. :-)

Re:  The chicken story earlier in the thread which was found and taken to the vet but at no charge to the poster,

I wonder what we should do if we found an injured dog on the road in our area, my first thought would naturally be to call my vet and take it in, but................... why would my vet offer this service for free?  Would I have to pay for the animal? Obviously could not claim for it through my insurance with it not being my dog.

Should we call an animal shelter or the RSPCA (which would probably take a while to get to an injured dog) or do vets have an oath to help such animals at no cost to the person helping it?

Just curious as it's not something, **touch wood** that I have had to deal with to date, what is the correct thing to do? Help it obviously, but some could not cope with the financial burden, if there was one.

I saw tha aftermath of a dog knocked over last year. The drivers of the car were panicking and didn't know where to turn as it was in the evening, the police had been called to no avail. I took the dog to the out of hours vets now and explained the situation. The dog, a yorkie, had to be pts as it had broken it's back. Although I gave all of my details they said there would be no come back on me for money. I put up a few notices in the local shops and a lady came forward, the dog had been looked after by a pet sitting service whilst she was on holiday. To cut a long story short they said the dog had ran off whilst on a walk on the Friday, I picked it up on the previous Wednesday so they were lying though their teeth. Vets Now still had the dog, although I didn't tell the lady the dog had been PTS I said that they should contact the Vets Now. She rang a few days later to thank me for taking the dog there and told me it had died, she had paid the bill but was taking legal action to recover costs from the petsitters.
I think most vets will treat compassionately an animal that has been injured that you find without looking to you for recourse. i hope that helps.

Good to know Floradora, bless you for taking care of the poor little dog, how terribly sad for the owner. :-(

I wonder what happens though if no owner is traced 'just my morning/now afternoon ponder' I wonder if vets have some sort of claim from somewhere for animals they help without payment or if they just take it as a loss, after all they are a business. **continuing to ponder**

>I wonder what we should do if we found an injured dog on the road in our area, my first thought would naturally be to call my vet and take it in, but...................

I've taken injured pets and wildlife I've found to various vets over the years, and never been charged anything - they know me and my own animals so they know I'm not pulling a fast one. If no owner is traceable (and obviously there's no owner in the case of wildlife) then it's marked down as a loss.

Pondering over! :-D

I am sure that the vets would probably put it down to bad luck, you win some you lose some. I know that often the local council will pay a contribution towards a RTA if no owner traced if it was within their local authority. Hope none of us are ever in taht situation though.
The owner took a lot of comfort when I told her my daughter had wrapped her in a blanket and cradled her all the way to the vets. I couldn't let on though I knew she had died, it upset me for a long while.

Had almost finished typing long winded reply but see JG has pretty much covered it - in more direct form too LOL!

Teri ;)

We knocked a cat down once on a Sunday evening. We shot off to our Vets and phoned him. He opened up the surgery but just as he was driving in, the cat seemed to stretch and then died. He took it in and did a complete check on it and pronounced that its back had been broken. We did not get charged. Also, when my husband knocked a dog down and took it off to the Vets, they said that they don't charge but charge it to the RSPCA unless the owner is found. As it was the owner was found as we had reported the accident to the police. The owner paid the bill.

> It depends on what limit the credit card company will give you though. Certainly we could never pay our vets bills with a credit card. So far this year our vets bills have totalled roughly £3500. And credit cards charge a lot of interest

I still find it cheaper to pay the interest than to Insure.

And, if you pay the whole amount within a month, they charge no interest at all :)  It just gives you that bit of extra time to find the money without expecting your vet to wait for it.

Debs

Yes it encourages you to paynit off as soon as humanly possible to minimise or avoid interest charges.

I agree if I had lots of dogs I would do this but as only one is insured then I don't mind paying for that - esp as he's off for an xray on Fri :(

i work in a large referral practice in scotland and there is no difference in the price of services between insured and uninsured animals. we ask if animals are insured simply to know what sort of financial situation the owners are in. we still offer all services to uninsured animals, we would never advise to have an animal pts because ot wasnt insured, we would just let the owner know the estimate of treatment and allow them to decide. we allow clients to pay up their bills as we realise that not everyone can pay everything upfront.
when admitting an animal, we get the owner to sign a consent form giving us permission to go ahead with all procedures that have been discussed, but they alsp sign saying that further tests or procedures may be needed, especially in an emergency. a problem we have is that of getting hold of the owners at critical times. we have had dogs collapsing that need to be taken to theatre, sometimes have radiographs done and bloods ran, all in a short space of time to establish why this has happened. one of the vets will be on the phone trying to get hold of the owners, but this isnt always possible, so what do we do in that situation? leave the dog until we contact the owners? even if it means they could potentially die? we had a dog in recently, that was admitted on a thursday, owners signed consent form, had surgery on friday, vet couldnt get hold of owners at all, phoned several times, left messages, on both phone numbers we had, tried again all day saturday ( the dog was able to go home on sat) and didnt get them until sunday night? what if that dog had crashed under anaesthesia and needed reviving? bloods would have been taken and ran in our laboratory, fluids would have been increased, potentially blood transfusion if he had bled out?

I'm learning a lot here, it is good to know what goes on in an actual veterinary surgery. This has been a very good thread and my opinion has changed, whenever a vet would say to me "Do you have Insurance?" I have automatically thought, they are asking to see how much they can fleece from the insurance companies, but there is obviously a lot more to it than that.

When I left my girl for surgery a few years back, I signed everything they gave me and said do whatever it takes! I got a bill for a £1,000 but at the time I didn't care, just wanted my girl back safe and sound, later when I looked at the bill I did look with cynical eyes, did she really need to have this and that done.

But, this thread has changed my opinion completely on this subject at least. :-)