My dog hasn’t needed a vet since his puppy shots 6 years ago so he’s not registered with one.
I shop a lot in Pets at Home, I buy her barking bakery woofins there and other treats, a wonderful selection, great staff, a friendly efficient shop I have had nothing but good things to say about.
So when my dog needed the care of a vet it was an onvious easy choice to take him there for help.
He’s not the easiest dog to deal with, he can be a bit a temperamental so they muzzled him to examine him which is fair enough but we felt like a number, they didn’t get to know him really, they over catastrophsized his problem, talked about a really expensive, several thousand pound surgery (I didn’t have pet insurance) and subsequently the possibility of having to put him to sleep.
We got some medicine, the whole thing cost a couple of hundred quid and we came away more worried and disturbed than before the visit.
There was another mix up when they were supposed to be following up with a consultation with a surgeon that never materialised and when I finally got through to the veterinary staff they did apologise and said the whole thing hadn’t been handled very well.
It wasn’t until a friend said get a second opinion and recommended a smaller private veterinary clinic before making any big decisions. We had talked about how we couldn’t afford the expensive operation that there was no guarantee would work and talked about maybe having to consider the kinder option if his quality of life wasn’t good.
It’s a very hard conversation to have with the family, of course.
However when we went somewhere else the experience was the complete opposite. The vet was loving, took time with our dog, gained his trust first and was able to examine him with a few grumbles sure but without a muzzle.
He didn’t recommend any surgery, he recommended a much slower approach, ibuprofen an anti inflammatory medicine, rest for two weeks, minimal walking, no jumping and see how things were.
The long and short of it, the dog recovered and no further action was necessary.
My assessment of Vets For Pets in our experience was it’s all about the money, the referrals, and getting you locked into a lengthy and intensive treatment plan before actually seeing if the pup can get better on their own.
Obviously this is only one experience and we could just have been unlucky with the vet in one location, it’s a big business with over 450 stores.
And maybe that’s the problem, it’s too big to be personal beyond being a great pet shop when it comes to veterinary care.