What do you look for in a new vet? (XPosted)

amesylph

So Ki will be here with us in Colorado after Valentine's Day (and a fun drive back from California where he is currently). I *loved* my vet back in the Bay Area and was lucky that my local vet turned out to be awesome. I just kept going there even after I moved around to other cities in the Bay and never really had to 'shop around'. Colorado is, quite unfortunately, a bit too far away to stick with my awesome vet.

I don't know other ...how should I say this?... 'enthusiastic' dog owners locally to give me recommendations and our Yelp community is not very active. Do you have any tips or stories that can help us determine:

a) what we might want to look for, ask about when looking at a vet
b) how to 'interview' or otherwise determine if the vet might be the right fit in a proper way...you know, practical things we can do to determine that the vet is right for us and Ki. Do we interview, go for a mini checkup, etc?

Thanks for any advice, input, or stories!

StaticNfuzz

This was a discussion sometime ago but I can't find the link in the forum search.

Anyway, here is an outside link if you scroll down some it will give you some info about selecting. http://www.consumersresearchcncl.org/Veterinarians/veterinary_chapters.htm

I am sure you have an idea about this and this is just a summation of what I look for and have experienced.

I look for someone I am comfortable with and has a good general bedside manner with my dogs. I also look at the staff to determine what they are about. Some places have a lot of discord and I stay away if there is no method of management.
Many clinic will give you a tour and show you how they operate. Avoid a clinic that has staff doing most of the work and you don't meet the vet or staff try to shuffle your dog to the back for minor routine stuff. It can be a sign that the vet may not be present or there is someone else like the tech working on the dog.

Make sure that you can select the specific vet that you are comfortable with and you are not forced to see just any vet if it is a multi-practice situation. Some vets are less enthusiastic about the Nihons or Chowie type dogs. Those type of individuals should be avoided since a dog will usually react to them and vise versa from a mile away.

I also would look at how they handle emergency situations, their fees, and how the clinic handles euthanasia.

If you are looking for a specialist they can be a bit more aloof and the best sometimes do not give you that warm fuzzy, but look at the overall credentials and ask around. Maybe ask at your local pet food boutique and specialty stores. Some area training centers or boarding facilities may know about of vet reputations also. Some vets are not happy working with the public and that will surface and the info passes via the grape vine.

Snf

Heidi

I basically try different vets for routine stuff like shots and whatever, and that lets me sample a few different ones. After that, I go to whichever one seems to understand me and share my philosophies the best. For instance, my current vet got huge bonus points for prescribing red meat for Rakka after she lost a lot of blood rather than trying to sell me some "fortified" Science Diet crap.

Naturally, I want a competent vet, but I don't always know how to judge if they're more competent until something actually happens. Even then, it's hard to tell if a different vet would have done a better job. I mean, you can't blame complications on the vet in most situations. The vet does know more about veterinary medicine than I do.

It's like with human doctors, I guess. They did go to med school and they do know more than I do, but you run into problems if they don't share your philosophies or are at least willing to answer your questions and respect your decision in the end.

sjp051993

I can't offer up a whole lot here. Been using the same vet for the past 23 years.

amesylph

Thanks for the advice and information...it definitely boosts the confidence going into this.

tjbart17

You are picking up Ki from the Bay Area? Where about? That's where I am.

sukoshi_mom

I haven't changed vet services in 20+ years and that's after the hospital was acquired by a major chain (VCA). What keeps me with this facility:
1) it is an emergency facility, open 24 hours, so you can get advice and care if you really need it
2) it has connections to the UC Davis Veterinary Medical school through staff and programs
3) several of the vets have been there for years
4) administrative and support staff are always responsive--and if things don't go exactly right, they are courteous
5) the "medical director" is a vet have I known over the years and trusted. Her advice is always professional, thoughtful, and thorough.

Heidi

Oh yeah, I forgot about policies, those are important. I want 24 hour emergency service, and I want to be able to call and get advice if I can't decide whether they need to go in or if I can do something at home. I don't like the vets who just tell you to bring them in no matter what and won't give you any advice over the phone. I don't want to stress everyone out with a trip to the vet if I can deal with it at home.

I also want to know what their policy on payment is. I've yet to have a situation where I couldn't just pay everything. I want a vet that will let me do a pay half now and the rest next week or with post-dated cheques or something. Just because you never know when you'll have multiple expensive family emergencies at once. If the dog gets sick, the car breaks down, the basement floods, and the fridge breaks all at once, it's just a lot easier on the budget if you can pay in installments.

amesylph

Awesome, yes. Policies are def something I should check, thanks! I like having a list of things to keep me on track with this sort of thing so these are all great examples.

Tara - I'll be staying in the south bay and heading to the peninsula to pick up Ki and my stuff. hehe I grew up in the Bay Area so we'll definitely be going back quite often to visit. Maybe we can time one of our trips to coincide with a meetup.

white_bear

I personally tend to be a vet's nightmare - I ask a lot of questions, never take the vet's word for it and do my own investigation (triangulation muahaha), ask him to write down everything he gives to my dog and the quantity, ask to be explained why a certain drug is prescribed and not another, see whether he is stuck on kibble or not (similarly to what heidi said) and if he can recommend natural 'helpers' for a specific problem, see whether he is familiar with the particularities of my breed (like low tolerance in the case of drugs and anaesthetics, specific blood cell counts, etc), see whether he jumps to set a diagnosis and prescribes treatment without doing tests (treating a mycosis for example without scraping a bit and analyzing it), jumping to prescribe antibiotics in the case of a minor cough for example and I could go on and on.

The main thing, though: I want only one vet that knows my dogs' history and particularities and I want to be able to call him at 2 am in an emergency and know I can count on him. I can't stand being pushed from vet to vet (this usually happens in the case of a big clinic with lots of vets that work in shifts - it's very unlikely you'll get the same vet twice).

PS: about minor stuff like vaccinations: I want my vet to know that in the case of an anaphylactic shock following vaccination the dog should be given andrenaline and not anibiotics (it happened here, a gorgeous rough collie died because a stupid vet didn't know what to do). True, anaphyplactic shocks are not that common but it's unacceptable for a vet to not know what to do in this case.

amesylph

Nihon Ken Forum - Making you feel better (or at least not alone) in your dog-craziness from the first post. Really though, thanks white_bear...adding stuff to my list...

white_bear

LOL, how true!

I forgot one more thing that I want in a vet - if he doesn't know smth or is not sure what to do I would like him to tell me he needs a bit more time to investigate this or send me to a specialist. I would prefer that to giving me treatment that doesn't solve or worsens the situation.

Unfortunately, you discover all these things in time, you can't just go up to the vet and start bombarding him with questions. Although this is a good test: if after the third question you are not being rushed out the door and the vet calmly explains evth, you might have a keeper (common sense, though: don't bombard him with questions if there are 20 people waiting outside).

ShikokuSpirit

I have a vet that I go to more reliably with the dogs but I'm finding myself traveling to different vets quite often. My cats don't really have a specific vet, I just get recommendations and then take them somewhere for cheap vacs or a specific place to get blood testing done or to get spayed (I don't trust just any vet for this). With the dogs, if they get sick, depending upon urgency I might go to the closet one available or open...or travel to this one specific vet that I ONLY take my animals to whenever they fall ill, lol.

I like honest, friendly staff and knowledgable ones at that. Which is why I've been sticking with "my main vet" with the dogs because they fit this desciption and my dogs are comfortable with everyone there . I've come across vets that were indeed friendly and knowledgable but NOT at all honest...rips offs...I'd pay the office visit fee and relocate to elsewhere.

Get a feel for the vet doctor and staff, make sure you're comfortable and I would recommend visiting many different vets before just settling on one. Also, get opinons from the experiences of others who take their animals there. Feel free to research your vet doctor in question - where that person went to school, their "on the job" experiences...ya know qualifications and such...how many years in practice? How many animals have they treated? What kind of animals? =p.

Good luck!

tjbart17

I would definitely be up for a meetup anytime. I'm supposed to go to the South Bay to meet up with a couple Kai's soon, but the weather has been so poor.

violet_in_seville

I think that I posted about vets in the shiba forum. Honestly I took the opposite tack. I had heard about four vets, one got mixed reviews, another one was only known as ok, and two of them were recommended as being very good. I stayed with the one that I first went to because our experience was so good (explanations for every decision they suggested, as well as the explanations of what other vets did and why they chose to do things a different way, not to mention the utter honesty of even telling us that while we could get certain things from them, that it would probably be cheaper if we did X). However, the main reason that I chose to visit our current vet over the one the other one that was supposed to be good was because one of my office mates had a rescued GSD (direct rescue, not from a shelter) that had been pretty badly abused and had numerous health issues. Not only did the vet successfully identify the issues and treat them all, but she said that her skittish, abused, rescue was actually comfortable with the vet and seemed to feel safe there and is now happy and healthy, thanks in part to this vet. If you get recommendations from people, I would carefully check out the recommendations from people who've had dogs with social or behavioral issues, or rescues that were in bad shape. The story of how our current vet dealt handled this dog made a huge impression on me. I honestly think that we've been very lucky. There is little more that I could ask of them. Good luck with Ki!