What your vet doesn't want you to know.....

I don't know whether you are niave or just have a lot of gall. Vets do surgery on certain days. They set aside times for emergencies and paperwork. I would be livid if my vet saw you, who did not bother to call and either made me wait for my appointment, or did not take me as an emergency. Why would you put your cat through the trauma of getting into the carrier if you did not now you would be seen the vet. Would you expect a vet to come out of surgery to take care of your cat just because the cat was in the carrier and you had trekke over there. God forbid that I would have you as a customer.

I have worked in a clinic before not a vets but I wan tot let you in on a secret. Sometimes my doctor sleeps and have the patient wait for an hour or so..Sometimes he is just so lazy to attend to them. If this vet you have lets you wait so long better transfer to another because that means he's either lazy to attend to his patients or he simply just doesn't care at all.

Our vet is normally that way. If you call up and have a problem, they will take you as soon as you get there. I personally prefer to call ahead so that they know I am on my way. I believe our vet keeps open appointment slots JIC there is an emergency that has to be taken care of.

The vet could have had house calls or surgery planned and just decided to fit you in so as not to disappoint a client. I don't know how busy your vet usually is but if a whole day of work is planned (it might not be just consultations, it could be surgery, training, meetings, interviews, house calls etc) and someone just walks in off the street and says they want to be seen then and there, it can cause problems. There is the issue of having to reschedule all previous plans made while keeping the customer happy. Although if I was in your situation I'd be annoyed if that happened. However the reasons above could have been why you were told you had to wait an hour.

In defense of the vets, and because I was a veterinary assistant, I would like to let you know that while you may not have seen anyone come in that doesn't mean they didn't have patients to see. I know that some people will drop off their animal for care first thing in the morning, and the vet works on them according to a set schedule. The owners might not come back to pick up the pet until that afternoon. Also, some days they schedule for surgeries, which, they will generally have several surgeries scheduled, and they're working on those that may have even been dropped off the night before, and have to be kept for observation over nite either from being dropped off in the morning or the night before for a first thing in the morning surgery. So just because you didn't see anyone come in while you were there, chances are, your vet probably finished workong on one patient and went ahead and squeezed you in inbetween surgeries. I don't know, my vets always make time for me. I have two that I mainly use now. Dr. Ann is my main vet, she handles all of my horses, and the farm dogs for the most part. She is a farm call vet, so she only workd out of her "office"/home, a few days a month. (Which is about 35 miles away from me).... She usually comes to us. (And her house call is only 35$, shich is awesome!!!) For emergencies, I use Dr. Jackie, who is 15 miles west. She has gone above and beyond the call of duty for me. My red heeler, Grady, was shot 1 year ago this week, by coyote hunters hunting at nite. (very illegal)... Anyway, I called the dogs in for their nightly treats, and Diddles and Cinch came bounding in, and Grady, well he finally hobbled up the steps and in the house, and sat down in front of the stove, whnere I noticed blood was dripping from him. That was not good. I checked him over, saw a gigantic hole in his "arm pit" of his left front leg, and a small hole in his left hip. This was 9:00 PM. I immediately called Dr. Jackie, and she said, "Meet me at the clinic, but you'll have to lift him on the table so bring help if you can't do it by yourself, because I had back surgery two weeks ago and I'm still on lifting restrictions." I got Grady there, put him on the table, she determined that it was a high power rifle that shot him. It entered his left hip, exited under his left front leg. She sewed him up the best she could, put him on antibiotics, and said he needed some pain meds. Well, Grady was 15 at that time, and had torn his ACL the summer before and has some arthritis, so he already had a prescription for Deramaxx from Dr. Ann, and I told her I had those, and she said those would work just fine. Normally, she would have kept him at the clinic for observation, but because she knows I used to be a veterinary assistant, she let me take him home. Because it would have been VERY expensive to take him on down to the Vet college for exploratory surgery to see if he damaged internal organs, and his breathing was fine, his heart rate was fine, and he had no pain other than the entrance and exit wounds, she said with his age, (Which by the way is OLD for a Heeler they usually only live to 10-12 years old, he was 15)... It would not be in his best interest to put him through the surgery anyway, just keep him comfortable. I got him home, called the game warden in our area, and he had me call the sheriff's department because of Scruffy's Law, shooting Grady was a felony. Anyway, I love my vets, they are always ready to take care of my pets WHENEVER I need them to, they've come on the spur of the moment for a colicky horse, or just routine dental/shots and stuff.

Yes I can quite believe you there about vets, but the same things can happen with a doctor. My daughter is 2 now, about 4 months ago she had really bad sickness and diarrohoea, she had had it for about 3 days constant and she was really poorly. I dropped my 2 boys off at school then went straight down to the doctors to try and get an appointment. There were about 3 people in waiting to see a doctor and I asked the ever happy receptionists could I get a doctor to see my girl. They said no they were fully booked I wouldnt be able to get in til the afternoon session, my daughter at this point started throwing up and they still were adamant that she couldnt be seen. I told them I wasnt going nowhere until my daughter had seen a doctor, so they said ok you can sit and wait but you might not get seen, but you know hardly anyone else came in while I was there and I was seen within half an hour. Best part is my daughter was dehydrating and ended up being sent up hospital.