I have often been critical of Veterinarians that appear to me to be less than caring of the Animal and more of How much they can charge you. Often I have noted many support my views but also many do not. A lot of people comment that as new treatments evolve so does the cost and I should perhaps take this in to consideration. Rightly or Wrongly I have never altered my view, as over the years I have seen such a difference in a visit to the Vet. It used to be that you would go along to your chosen surgery and your local Veterinarian would examine the relevant Animal and give you some form of Treatment, today it appears to be "Referral Referral Referral".

A couple of years ago I visited our local surgery due to a heart problem and paid a consultation Fee of £34, they wanted to Refer me to their main surgery to see their specialist at a consultation cost of £95. (Had this specialist had been doing a normal surgery that he would do under normal allocation the consultation fee would only have been £34) After doing some tests including an ECG at £80 he then wanted to Refer me to the visiting European Specialist at a consultation cost of £110. So now £319 later I am talking to the main man, but I am sorry This Is A Rip Off. Anyhow more importantly: Unfortunately whilst out on a walk on Sunday one of the Newfs suffered a Cranial Cruciate Ligament Rupture. Without considering the feeling of hopelessness in trying to get him back to the Car it was a very stressful 90 mins in trying to get to our surgery. With it being a Sunday the Vets were only operating on a minimal basis and felt that we should take him home (with pain relief) with a view to returning if/when their specialist was free to see him. (I will add that this is a Large Referral Operated Surgery with Four Orthopedic Clinicians) We rang at 8am and were still sat at home at 11am. After two more phone calls and without any of their Orthopedic Vets assessing him further we were told that we would have to wait TWO WEEKS for them to obtain the relevant surgical parts to repair him. Two Weeks!!! He could not use his leg at all and was obviously in great pain. We immediately started making our own enquiries only to find that another Orthopedic Specialist wanted us to wait two weeks. We attempted to make direct contact with the main UK referral places such as Fitzpatrick and Langford only to be told that we could not speak with anyone unless we were Referred. We did eventually get our Vet to refer us to Langford but not before they offered to send someone out to asses if they felt that he could wait for two weeks. I am sorry but I cannot accept that my dogs best interest was put first in this case and strongly feel that my vet in particular should have given the option to refer elsewhere if they could not have treated him immediately and I cannot help but feel that the only reason they did not was MONEY.

It is hard to explain to people unless this is something that they have gone through. He is a large breed dog and could not use his leg at all and any movement he made was obviously painful and although obvious, the expression on his face told you of the pain he was in. In addition he had no choice but to urinate and defecate where he was (even with our help) which caused him far more concern than it did me. Anyway, he is now at Langford and probably being operated on today.

I am sorry for your experince amd do hope your dog recovers well. I have to say my own experince with my vets and referal has been quite different and I have always felt the animal has come first.  Maybe I am lucky but i do hope not

This sounds like the average GP Surgery where basically the GP is just a clearing office - anything specific and it's off to a Specialist at the local Hospital.   Thankfully not to be paid for!

I actually asked my then vet to refer me to the local KC/BVA eye specialist with my Basset at one point, and was.   But it cost A BOMB and frankly I spent a good 75% of the time I was with him (probably about 20 minutes in total but with a 2 hour drive there) telling him all the information he should have had via my referring vet!!   And in the end came away no more the wiser, but with a bottle of Metacam and eye drops.   He wanted me to come back in x-weeks.   I didn't.

I hope the average vet isn't going the same way as NHS GPs are!!

I think you have just been unlucky. One of my dogs wasn't weeing properly for a couple of days- not enough to alarm me but enough to put him in the car and take him along to my vet with another dog who was due his vaccinations.

My vet opens Sundays and charges the same price as any other day of the week, shuts at 8pm in the evening and 5pm on a Sunday. My vet vaccinated the dog who had the appointment and then I brought in the other dog - it was 5pm and we were the last patient of the day. Having examined my dog it was discovered that he had a stone blocking his urethra and needed an emergency, life saving operation. Bearing in mind that the practice was closing and that my vet doesn't do his own Out of Hours Service he immediately rang two other vets from the practice and took my dog straight into surgery.

I had a phone call just after 11pm to come and collect him - 6 hours after his emergency admittance at the end of their working day. The operation saved his life and I was charged the normal rate - no increase for OOH's at all. My dog would normally have been referred to our local specialist but my vet decided there wasn't time.

The practice isn't close to me - there are at least 8 vets who are located nearer to my home but I choose to travel to the one I trust to listen to me and do the best for my dogs. I would suggest that it might be worth looking around for a vet that you feel more comfortable with - they are out there and I found mine by recommendation. There is one other practice that I would have no qualms about using - owned by a friend of mine - but the distance isn't a realistic one to travel in the event of an emergency - my vet is 30-40 minutes drive away and my friend's practice is over an hour or more depending on traffic.

Unfortunately I believe "The Local Vet" is primarily a thing of the past. What I found frustrating (bearing in mind our immediate concerns and fears for our baby boy) is that they appeared to be happy to leave him in that condition for up to Two weeks with just pain relief, he is a heavy dog and was unable to virtually Stand let alone relieve himself. In addition other Specialist Surgeries refused any assistance because we had to be referred. This is not what a Vet should be. I reiterate my own Vets are a Large Referral based surgery and only Referred us to an alternative after we had made our own enquiries and expressed that we did not want to leave it that long.

Anyway, We now have an update. We took him to Langford who operated on him yesterday and we are told the surgery went well. The bones have been plated and pinned so we have to be very careful when he comes home, which may be a problem as he's a Nutter. The downside is that they believe once one has gone the other will follow and are advising that we will probably need to do the other in the near future. Unfortunately "We do not have Insurance" for one reason or another, so that's going to be fun. Looks like Beans On Toast for a while.

Hope your boy will be ok and recover well. My previous dog had a crusciate repair when she was 8.. The vet also said that the other side may go, but it never did and she lived another 6 years

I totally understand about your Newf as my girl ruptured her cruciate and would not even attempt to walk and yet she was far from wimpish. I have had numerous Goldens, Bernese and the Newf rupture their ligaments and yet only one developed a problem with the other side so don't expect it to happen as it may well not. The last dog who had the TPLO was 12 at the time and the vet "kindly" offered to do the two legs on the same day, even though only one had ruptured. I declined! She lived to be 15 without further problems. I think careful management post op for about 4 months is crucial in saving the other leg. Good luck. He will be fine.

PLEASE take it slow with your dog post-surgery.   We had a neighbour where we lived, who had this surgery done, one leg, on her Large Munsterlander.   The silly woman had him back out on exercise way too early with the result he basically limped for the rest of his life.

The cruciate ligament it seems reasonable a "normal" vet might be able to repair it, but the neighbour's newf did this when I was 8 (and the dog was 6) and was PTS as it was deemed too much cost and effort back then. Likewise, when I was a child nobody would be doing heart surgery on a dog but the absolutely loaded. What were you thinking the outcome of the cardiac investigation would be? You wouldn't expect your GP to do heart surgery would you!? You can say to the vet at the outset "we don't want him having surgery for this" and you will be given meds to control the condition, if there are any, and a prognosis. If you go in and say "fix this" then they will fix it refer to someone who might be able to.

my general vet was able to do a scan on my gsd when we were concerned about his lungs and heart but I expected and she explained that if there was anything on the scan she was concerned about the best route would be a referral to specialist. Unless I decided otherwise . I think of my vet as poodlenoodle says mostly like a gp who will refer if its out of his expertise or remit. We just forget how expensive medical treatment vet or nhs as we don't pay for humans in many cases. Having private health  insurance and seeing the true costs soon gives you an idea of what things cost. I would say either say no thank you or go elsewhere if you arnt happy

In 1998 my mother, after a long illness with her heart (atrial fibrillation and eventually ventricular fibrillation as a result of damage left by rheumatic fever secondary to scarlet fever as a child) had a double chamber pacemaker fitted and a cardiac ablation done (to burn out the problem nerves causing the fibrillations).  At the time her surgical team told her that the treatment, from initial assessment, fitting the pacemaker, allowing her to heal and then later completing the ablation and programming the pacemaker correctly, then a 3 month follow up to check everything was as it should be, had cost the NHS £78,000.  Just the pacemaker was about £30,000 as it was a new sort.  Sadly a few weeks before her follow up she was diagnosed with stage IV cancer in her uterus.  I shudder to think how much the treatment for THAT cost!

We don't realise how much these treatments cost, you are so right, and as possibilities expand in veterinary medicine the need for specialisation grows.  My friend has an excellent vet for her horses, but they almost never see dogs (their choice, they specialise in large animal) so i wouldn't use them for my boy.  Likewise my vet is a great canine generalist and can cope with most common ailments, but i wouldn't be looking for them to do heart surgery.

So sorry you feel that you have not been treated very well and I hope your boy recovers without problems. My own experience with 3 local vets has been largely positive, I usually like to see the same vet each time which can be a occasional problem but normally ok and I start out by saying that cost will be a factor in my decisions. I have never had to be referred in nearly 40 years apart from a serious heart murmur in a GSD puppy and my current vet actually didn't charge me for an x-ray or an out of hours consult when my bitch was diagnosed with IMHA, they were very aware of my cost restrictions.  I think the main thing is that nowadays there are so many options for treatment and the vets would be criticised heavily if they didn't offer these but it puts owners in a difficult situation when a vet says "we can refer and the treatment will cost in the region of £xxxx" because it might make an owner commit to a course of action that is not affordable and sometimes the results will not be of long term benefit to the dog.  I have in mind a bitch who was diagnosed with mammary cancer which had spread to the lymph nodes in the groin, she was given a full double sided strip and node removal plus chemotherapy, she was in a great deal of pain as the wounds took nearly 9 weeks to heal and she only lived another 3 months as the cancer had already spread.  Her owners spent a large chunk of money to give her a chance and sadly really regretted it, they felt they were guilt tripped into the operation.

My main objection on this matter was the annoyance that I could not get my boy urgently treated either by my own Vet, nor the three specialist surgeries we contacted without a Referral, surely the Animal should come first. My own Vets are actually a Referral Based Surgery that include Orthopedics, yet they were not able to get the relevant Plate for surgery for TWO WEEKS. I can only assume that they were happy to just leave him on pain Meds totally unable to place any weight what-so-ever on his leg. He is 60 kilo and this would have been a disaster for us in attempting to manage let alone his pain. Because of the two week delay we immediately tried to find other options, this is where we were told that they are unable to help without first being referred. It just felt that no one seemed to care enough about the Animal, which in my eyes should have been the only priority. I can fully understand the normal referral type service but in emergency cases surely they should have at-least offered to look at him, what has happened with the Duty of Care. Following our insistence we were referred and our Boy was operated on the following morning so this does suggest that they also felt that there was some urgency in treating him.

In my previous post where I mentioned about the costs on referral, this was perhaps more aimed at our own Vets that has grown over the years and now operates an additional Referral Based Surgery from the same premises. Whilst, up to this point, I have always sung their praises it is fair to say that they are a bit of a Rip-Off. They now operate an in-house referral where by you see a Vet and on many occasions they now refer you to their own referral service thus paying the normal £36 consultation and then a further £80 plus for an in-house referral to their own specialist. Ironically if their own specialist is taking a normal surgery then the cost is just the normal £36.

UPDATE: Milo is home, half Shaved, Leg Pinned and slowly getting back to his normal mischievous self. Trying to keep him still is proving very difficult so unfortunately he does have to be caged for some period of the Day. Just hoping that everything is healing properly but not looking forward to having the other Leg done.

SKV they are charging to refer you to their own in house vets!? I agree that is a complete rip off!

Glad your boy is on the mend and that he could be operated on timeously when you pushed. It does rather sound that they were disinterested in his suffering - aside from anything else the addition potential injury caused by carrying 60kg on 3 legs is surely a major risk? Letting it go on a fortnight seems to be asking for trouble, but maybe they are okay with trouble they can charge to fix....

the odd bit if I've read this right is that if you were able to find someone eto treat your boy earlier the vets weren't prepared to playball and do the referral. it takes as long as it does to type an email. not very moral  at all imo. I have no idea how pricing would work for an in house referral I don't think I have ever been charged for a referral from the originating vet that comes as part of the consult