You can't afford a horse if you can't afford a vet....what exactly do we mean...and how about hamsters?

[MissCoco]

@RMJacobs
Sorry you had to deal with that! I gasped when I read your story.
It is true that many large(er) animal vets aren’t very knowledgeable about rodents, and some vets can be very callous about them as well.
I do think you are being generous to that vet though. I would be horrified at the suggestion.

When I was about 9 I took in a hamster with “wet-tail” (hamster diarrhea) in to our vet and he pretty much said “tough luck” to a child. I vividly remember him pointing out that the medications to treat the diarrhea would be more expensive than a new hamster. In the end he gave a wishy-washy answer about “trying” to order antibiotics from a local university, and never followed up. My mother later told me that incident was a big factor in her searching out a new vet for our dog.
He was an old fashioned vet though, and considered it silly we let our beagle sleep in the house, since we were treating a “hunting dog” as a “pet”. :rolleyes:

[RMJacobs]

@MissCoco, I don’t think I am being generous to that vet. I asked them to do something that was (at least at that time) outside how they chose to run their practice. Their initial response was due to not having any rodent expertise. They were uncomfortable euthanizing an animal when they didn’t know the proper way to do it. When I begged, one of the owners agreed to read up on it and do the deed. If they routinely (or ever) treated rodents, then I would have had a major problem with their response.

Rebecca

[MissCoco]

@RMJacobs that is a very good point!
I’m sorry if I maligned your vet, that wasn’t my intention, I meant to say that I admire your ability to deal with that situation, and to tell the story now without judgement.

I also work in research, and have more experience with small animal models than I would like to, so I probably have an unrealistic sense of how common knowledge of small animal euthanasia options is.

I’m just glad that the internet does exist now, and that many people can at least find a small animal vet, though often they are not very close by.

[RMJacobs]

@MissCoco, no worries! It’s not like anybody mentioned the practice by name. I guess you can’t be maligned when you’re anonymous.

I’m always surprised at how much I was able to accomplish before the Internet was so robust. It has made so many things so much easier. I think back and wonder “how the heck did I do that without all the information that is available today?”

Rebecca