[107barney]

I have a great vet. She's a wonderful person, caring, compassionate, and very very smart. Do I trust my dogs' lives in her hands? The answer to that, (and this is a lawyer talking (LOL), is:

"it depends."

It depends on the facts of each situation. It also depends on how I feel about it as my dogs' owner, their guardian, the one who has the best intuition or plain old gut feeling about what should happen next.

I've had mediocre vets who disappointed me and vets that I called ignorant right to their faces. But that is part and parcel of every profession. That is when we, the owners, use our collective resources and stand up for animals! -- These resources can be anything that we as individuals (again as the guardians and therefore the ones who know our animals best) feel should be part of our analysis and decision-making.

That analysis and decision-making and the road we choose to follow is different for every single person and every single set of facts. There is only one certainty here - and that is that there are NO TWO EXACT situations. There is no ONE RIGHT ANSWER.

What I choose for my dogs is extreme and I openly admit it. I am willing to cook three different diets for three different dogs and spend my weekends roasting chickens because that is a decision that I alone made. I also choose to bring my sick dogs to a specialist hospital if I think they are sick because I believe the care to be better from the acute standpoint. I think they are more experienced. This is extreme, because most people start with their general vet. Either road is A-OK because each of us is an individual.

So the message of my post is to say that is not a crime or a sin to trust your vet. Trust your heart, and make that the first order of business.