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Lack of emergency pet vet overnight

The nearest pet ER for us is 45 minutes away, if traffic is light. The paperwork requires agreement to a minimum charge for the initial exam of $700, not including any diagnostics, treatment, or medications, and an attempt at resuscitation, if necessary, is an additional $700 (was told it’s very rarely successful) that must also be agreed to in advance.

It is what it is. I’m grateful for having one, and hope to never require its services again. To compare the pet ER to my regular vet clinic would be like comparing a hospital trauma center to my family physician’s office, IMO.

Fortunately, there are folks that have enough sense to weigh the difference. One solid blow with the blunt side of the axe to the base of the skull and the rabbit was gone. If that is animal cruelty, our society has a very twisted view that isn’t based in reality nor in the best interest of the animal. I guess we can both be thankful that we don’t have a vet-client relationship. And yes, virtually any method of killing an animal could go wrong. This includes chemical euthanasia.

As for difficulty accessing vet care, I don’t have a happy answer except to try and be prepared. Know your resources. If you have a good relationship with your vet, ask if there are prescription meds that should be in your kit. Just like horse owners typically keep Bute or Banamine on hand. Some OTC things I keep around are Benadryl and activated charcoal paste. Euthanasia needs serious consideration but will very much depend on user experience/ability/situation/animal eg. a mature bull vs. a toy poodle. If you can’t use a firearm, do you know someone who can? Is captive bolt an option? Again, know your resources and your limits.

The hardest part is adjusting our mindset to understand that no matter how much we love them, pets are a commodity. Vet med is a business. Just like human med is a business - maximize profits, reduce losses. Not profitable?
Shut it down. With that said, human med is an absolute cluster and should not be held up as the model to follow.

Good luck! This can be a tough question to grapple with.

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Thanks ZuZu she is okay.

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What exactly do you mean by this?

Only in America. The rest of the developed world apparently doesn’t agree.

I would be interested in seeing some of the studies you seem to have read. Do you have any links?

My vet can’t even let owners give some meds outselves, at home. Example, Solencia, a med we just started my cat on today. I don’t see vets dispensing euthanasia-strength drugs to laypeople. What would prevent owners using the drugs on themselves or other humans? Aged parents, maybe?

I really want to see some published studies you’ve read.

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How many seniors even have guns? Let alone axes?

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I don’t know of any vets who handle after-hours emergencies. The ones I do know all refer patients to the “nearest” emergency vet, which is about half an hour from here by car, for people who have cars.

Most people rushing to the vet in the middle of the night don’t want their pet euthanized. They want to save the pet and it can’t wait. That’s the concern.

I have two 24-hour vets near me, but luckily all my emergencies happened during regular working hours. My big concern would be a night staff member who was new/less competent but better than no care.

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:rofl: :rofl: :cry: :cry: :roll_eyes:

This sentence would be outrageously laughable if it weren’t so outrageously wrong. Have you no ethics at all?

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I don’t believe that particular person can see this, They seem to be blatantly amoral.

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I am sorry but 700 to walk in the door alone is flat out robbery… I have unfortunately been to the emergency vet multiple times in the past 3 years and occasionally in years past. Those visits have started at 150. A very reasonable number and one that isn’t out of the realm of possibility for many people. You can at least get an estimate and evaluation to see if additional measures are financially possible and feasible for the pet. 700 on the other hand would have even me who is willing to move Heaven and Earth for my pets if there is a need not going there unless death seems to be the only possibility.

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I’m amused by the “first world problems” comment…I certainly HOPE we are still talking about functioning in the first world!

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700 in some parts of the country wouldn’t be outrageous but I would think it was more likely 700 to stabilize and start diagnostics. At least in areas where Ive worked. I’ve had people come in with seizing dogs, respiratory distress cases, etc and we tell them $500-700 to assess, stabilize and start diagnostics. Much easier to give broad spectrum number and get started placing an IV, start fluids, oxygen, etc versus pulling up a detailed itemized estimate.

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Maybe keep up with what is going on in the world around you. Check out medical, veterinary, and business journals; social work and medical ethics are useful too. Visit your local university library and log onto magazines that cater to those same professions. Investigate the healthcare insurance industry, along with the origins of that system. (Note that vet med is pushing routine pet insurance as well.) Some of the more disturbing trends can be found in long-term care homes along with mental health care and rehab facilities. I have long said that healthcare and capitalism do not make good bedfellows. Due to the astronomical amount of money involved, I can’t imagine the US will ever switch to a single payer system. The lobbyists are too powerful.

Again, vet med along with every other service out there is a business. If it doesn’t operate at a profit, it will not exist. There is no study or citation needed for this.

I agree with this but what I’m addressing, is how to handle the situation when that ER vet care is not available. This is why I brought up euthanasia. If you can’t get the necessary care, then euthanasia may be in the best interest of the animal. How long should an eviscerated dog be expected to endure a slow painful death? An open limb fracture on a horse? A cow with obvious signs of hardware disease? Never did I say euth drugs should be prescribed.

If you have animals, then know your resources and your limits. A whole mess of stuff can fall under this and could include skills, finances, knowledge, transport, physical ability, emotional state, location, weather etc. It really is important to think through these things especially as we notice access to care becoming very difficult or for some, financially prohibitive. Even though there will be plenty of conditions that can only be treated within the vet clinic such as a blocked cat requiring surgery, the point is, what can be done in the interim until treatment is available or no longer needed eg. rattlesnake bite, “we have an appointment next week”?

Remember the OP asked how to handle limited ER vet clinic access and when I was able to respond more fully to her post this is part of what I suggested:

What useful information do you have to add? What do you keep in your animal first aid kit? Have you taken animal first aid or basic health class and was it useful? Do you have a favorite animal health website or other resources for reference? We can come up with all sorts of excuses and drama but hysterics and antagonism don’t help anyone including the animals.

And to answer those questions for myself:
I actually don’t have a dedicated kit but pull from the cattle, horse, and human medical supplies. (The charcoal gel was from the cattle medicine cabinet and oh my, what a mess!) For prescription meds - Dorm gel (horse), Meloxicam and Gabapentin (dog), Banamine
and several antibiotics that we’ve collaborated with our vet on the use of (cattle). Let’s see, IV materials for the cattle to give subcu fluids, dextrose, CMPK. Otherwise, it’s the usual bandaging material, wound ointments, stethoscope, thermometer, simple restraints, stomach pump/tubing - very basic stuff. I actually don’t have any good animal health websites to refer to so if someone has some favorites, please post them.

While I’ve been grateful for chemical euthanasia in almost all situations that required it, I can contact several people that have capably dispatched animals by firearm including a retired animal control officer. The main hitch there, might be time of response. A captive bolt gun has been nagging at me but need to research those further.

Several years ago, I did take an animal first aid class including CPR and have actually done mouth-to-snout (pre-class) but sadly, the calf was too premature to survive. Unless you work in vet med, the class can definitely be useful; there is always some thing to be reminded of or a new tidbit to glean. Again the OP is addressing what to do when emergent care is NOT available.

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I live on an island with no emergency service and no large animal vets. The vets that are on island have a rotation of who will handle after hours calls. They recently contracted with a telemedicine service that you call and have a $75 phone consult that either gets you through until morning or they will then give you access to the vet on call. None of the vets are taking new clients so anyone that wants to get a poet now for the first time must use a vet off-island which requires a boat ride to get there. If you horse has an emergency there are only a couple vets that can even stabilize the horse enough to get you off island to a horse vet service.

We are heading into true crisis here with no clear solution…

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I drove 180 miles yesterday to take one of the dogs for a final checkup on an issue he had over the summer. We have two elderly vets in my small town but they will only do vax and no after hours anything ever, also neither are taking new clients. Both of them desperately NEED and WANT to retire but would leave a huge vacancy in this small town so they hang on. Nearest large animal vet is that 90 miles away.

The vet 90 miles away is the housing for the rotating ER vet as well so that’s where we go for emergencies. I’ve only had to use it a couple of times and it’s not a picnic; 90 miles of nothing but trees, no towns, no gas stations, hazardous conditions at least half the year, deer/elk/bear interference, no cell service.

We’ve rarely lived close to a vet, half hour away is about the closest, so yes we do handle most of our animal situations accordingly. Stay out ahead of issues if possible, know basic emergency care and what we can do on our own with whatever we can pull together in our medical kit.

Having a close vet right now would be a luxury, I can hardly imagine.

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This fully-equipped pet ER is open 24/7/365, including holidays, and there’s a substantial overhead cost for that. It’s not a regular veterinary clinic.

$700 is a lot of money for me, too, but I understand why it costs what it does.

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About seniors and guns, I took a gun class in September because while I do have firearms education from Granddaddy, it was all related to shotguns and rifles. A handgun would be more portable and could go with me on my walks through the Wild, Wild Woods. But I wanted some training.

Anyway, the demographic range of that class would have surprised you. Men/women were split almost equally. There were several definite seniors well up in the gray-haired grandma range. Young people, i.e. below 35 (by my visual guesstimate), were the least represented group. And on the actual in-hand part, those gray-haired grandmas could shoot.

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I live fairly rural, but not in the boonies and the concept of an emergency vet for pets is still pretty new around here, we do not have one. The large animal vets have a number for emergencies after hours which they monitor and may come out for you, but that’s for livestock. Our nearest pet ER is a good 45+ minutes away, maybe an hour. The large animal serious vet hospital is about the same distance. I don’t know what everyone here that lives in town does, but amongst the farmers if your dog or cat has an emergency overnight, mostly you decide if it can reasonably wait until morning or…firearm. Not everyone can or will, but out in the country, most everyone at least knows someone they could call. I’m prepared to do that if I felt it more humane, although I don’t relish the idea I accept that sometimes things happen. I’ve thought about it more now that I have a dog big enough that I could not feasibly load him up myself if he were seriously laid out.

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I was trying to avoid the ER like the plague with my Emmy cat because of the cost. I did have an appointment with her with her regular vet…one MONTH out from my call to make an appointment out of concern for her little intermittent weird breathing episodes.

Needless to say, we didn’t make it and she ended up at the ER. I am not mad at her regular vet although it seems like they could allow for some urgent issues of which I consider breathing one of those. I was more mad at myself for not taking her to the urgent care (which I found out we had…who knew?) or the ER prior to it being an emergency situation. Luckily we have a 24hr ER but the wait times can be extensive and yes…big $$$ to walk in the door.

Oxygen and ICU for 2 days and with the follow-up the bill was only about $5000. I did euthanize her about 2 weeks after the ER visit. She didn’t respond to drugs (steroids, antibiotics and albuterol) and her chest X-ray was no better. She was burning way more calories than she was eating just moving air. The differential was asthma or cancer. I am pretty sure that seeing the regular vet wouldn’t have changed the outcome but she wouldn’t have suffered so long. No I wasn’t about to pull out the axe or a gun (that I don’t have). I hope we continue to have 24 hr ER coverage.

Susan

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