Citywise
Only Your Pet Knows for Sure
Worried about taking your pet to the vet? Here's how to avoid the heartbreak of worms and other dilemmas.
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In small animal practice, puppy vaccinations, spays and accidents take the biggest chunk out of the vet's day, but in-between duties range from the sublime to the ridiculous. There are such esoteric jobs as medicating poodle scrotums, cleansing infected cat bladders, deworming, treating rattle snake bites and gunshot wounds, telling the facts of life to reluctant studs, giving hormone shots, artifically inseminating animals, performing cosmetic surgery, giving flea shampoos, and advising parents on how to explain puppy deaths to children. (A good vet recommends that you do not try to replace an animal with its exact copy, as though it had come out of a duplicating machine.) Declawing cats is a no-no from a humanitarian standpoint, though vets will do it if it becomes a choice between no cat at all and a living clawless one. Declawed cats fare worse out-of-doors, but are okay indoors.
Vets have become pushers; they're trying to sell ovario-hysterectomies or spay operations, as they are called. They'd also like to get their scalpels on boy dogs. It's not that they have castration complexes, but they do want to get those male dogs too. The common enemy to animals is overbreeding. A good percentage of a stray puppy's life span is from the womb to the decompression chambers of the animal shelters, a kind of animal Buchenwald.
The spay operation stops all the cruelty at the source. It's not a difficult operation for a pro. In the morning when the female is brought in, she relaxes in a cage and listens to Muzak. The doctor has given her a complete physical examination. He goes back to the cages and says, "Morning, mama."
Mama is then brought into the examination room where she is given an anesthetic. There's a good half-hour prepararation in which her belly is shaved as though she were being readied for a burlesque act. A tube is placed in her trachea to allow the passage of anesthesia, or air if it should be necessary, into her lungs.
Then she is taken into the operating room and tied securely on a table slightly downward so her womb will be accessible, and her intestines will not crowd it. The animal is washed again around the belly with more antiseptic. The area is covered with a surgical sheet. (But for the furry paws sticking up, no one would know this wasn't a human operation, and in fact, this operation is equivalent to a human hysterectomy.)
The doctor and his assistant, in surgical mask and gown, operate, make a small incision and go in to remove the uterus and ovaries. Stitches close the incision and leave a minor scar.
The record for spay operations is held by a doctor I saw in Austin who can do it in six minutes and make it look as easy as cat's cradle. The smaller the amount of time the animal is opened to the world, the better.
Of course the operation becomes more difficult and expensive on older, fatter animals who have already experienced motherhood. It takes several extra minutes to slice through all the fat and find the reproductive organs. The price of the operation usually costs an average of $35-50 but this depends on the poundage involved. At the price though, it's a bargain.
The success of a small animal practice depends on pets always being a pleasure and not a pain. Unless you are a glutton for punishment, you wouldn't be likely to rush out and buy another animal if you've had nothing but heartache and indigestion with your first animal. Vets are the arbitrators between love and necessity, evaluating the chances of survival of a sick animal, and then helping both the animal and the human. The vet can say, "If this were my animal I wouldn't let it suffer..." Mercy killing is the hidden card that separates vets from regular doctors and animals from misery.
All vets implied that people should buy a pet the way they would buy a pure and complete luxury. If you can't keep up the monthly or yearly payments on their health and maintenance, in the form of vaccinations and spaying, then don't get a pet. Yearly vaccinations against rabies and distemper cost about $11, less than $1.00 a month. Where else can you get such mileage? Some misguided masters willingly spend money to get their pets groomed at clip joints but balk at spending money for vaccinations. They stamp their feet and say, "Millions for beauty and cosmetics, but not one cent for vaccinations."
But vaccinations given yearly to your dog and cat can mean the difference between life and death. For less than $30 you can get a year's worth of puppy and kitty vaccinations; for less than $11 you can get a year's worth of adult dog and cat vaccinations—with a physical exam included in the price. Since distemper is the number one dog disease, and since it kills 80 percent of all puppies that get it, you need to give your puppy three shots to ward off the disease: at six-eight weeks a shot for distemper and hepatitis (DH); at 12 weeks a shot for distemper, hepatitis, and leptospirosis (DHL); at 16 weeks a DHL shot and a rabies shot.
The major cat killer is known as panleukopena, a disease which can occur in epidemic form and spread like wildfire to all unvaccinated felines. This disease, popularly known as "yellow vomit," "cat plague," "feline enteritis," or "cat distemper" is not the same disease as dog distemper. Kittens need two shots for panleukopena: one at 6-8 weeks and the other at 12 weeks. At 16 weeks, not before, they will also need a rabies shot. Neither kittens nor puppies can develop a lasting immunity from a single shot, no matter how strong the dose. That's why your vet gives more than one. It's not just a vet rip-off.
So after you've given your puppy and kitten its shots it's really easy to keep up the same yearly insurance for your adult animals, with only two booster shots: a DHL and a rabies for dogs and a panleukopena and a rabies for cats.
Look at it this way. If the T.V. goes on the blink, picture starts fluttering up and down, zigzagging in and out, you don't sit there night after night crying over spilled news and watching the ole T.V. die. No, you're up in a flash, calling the repairman and giving him his $10 an hour and glad of it. But next to you is this dog, on the blink, who doesn't want any more bones and keeps asking for a priest, and you ignore him. Don't wait 'til it's too late. Get a vet.
GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR CHOOSING A VET
1. Consult the directories of the American Animal Hospital Association, or the American Veterinary Medical Association. These are guides vets use to know each other. The former guide will show you which vets maintain hospital facilities. These guides aren't infallible, but they are a good place to begin. In Texas, the Texas Academy of Veterinary Practice, an organization which hopes to foster continuing education for vets by conducting seminars on new developments in veterinary medicine, is another place to begin. Consulting dog breeders or cat breeders is another source.
2. After you choose a vet be sure, that he is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Does he cover his emergencies or does he always refer you to someone else?
3. Make sure you find someone who is willing to listen to you. Can you call this vet to find out whether or not to bring your animal to the office? Many of your queries can be answered over the phone. Either the vet can tell you to bring your animal in, or the vet can tell you which symptoms to watch.
4. How complete are your vet's facilities? Does he have his own operating room that he runs according to sterile and aseptic standards? Does he have X-Ray, Boarding, Dental, and Laboratory facilities? If he doesn't have this equipment does he refer you to someone who does? Does he send out his lab work (blood samples, urine samples, stool samples, etc.) Or does he do nothing?
5. Finally, do you like him or her? Does your animal thrive with his or her care?
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