[airplane]

Have any of you lost trust in your dogs vet? I feel as though I have. I just want to share a few things and get your guys opinion on it. I’m just struggling to figure out who to trust and how to make a judgment on the competence of a vet.

I received in the mail one of those cards saying your dog is due for vaccination. Théo is my only dog left after losing Bijou and Maezie. I know people have mentioned titer testing before, and a while back I had a conversation with the vet about it and she made it quite clear that there’s no research showing at such and such a level on the titer test means protection and that she recommends a certain schedule of vaccination and that she sees the titer test as being quite useless. Meanwhile the other day I read an article written by a vet where he says that once there’s any measurable titer that there’s active immunity and it lasts for life, and that measures of titers naturally go up and down depending on certain factors but it doesn’t mean there’s a lack of protection and that you can now say no to any more vaccines.

So it’s difficult for me to know who to trust when different vets have different opinions. I’m sure if I went to all the vets in town I might find one who has the same opinion as the vet who wrote the article.

I called my vet to ask questions about Maezie’s necropsy report because I’ve been reading a lot of research on anaphylactic shock in dogs and I just wanted to clarify some things with her. And surprise surprise, she now had a different interpretation about the hemorrhages that were on Maezie’s pancreas. Initially the vet was talking about issues processing fats and there were thoughts of pancreatitis. I knew Maezie was not symptomatic of anything like that and I know the research definitely pointed towards the anaphylaxis as being a possible cause of those hemorrhages. And now the vet told me that she reviewed Maezie’s bloodwork and the literature and now believes that those hemorrhages were indeed caused by the anaphylactic reaction. I guess maybe that’s perhaps an indication of how severe the reaction was when she died under anesthesia.

I’m upset that I was told one thing and then later told something else. I expect my vet to be an expert and to tell me the correct information. And I’m upset with the format of the necropsy report that came from the University of Saskatchewan. There’s interpretation involved to make sense of it. Apparently that’s common. But the way some parts of the report were written and put together seems to me like a cookie cutter approach where they probably copy and paste much of it off a previous document. Not my vets fault but it just adds to my frustration.

The last thing that really makes me feel like I’ve lost trust is that the vet never recognized what happened to Maezie as being an anaphylactic reaction. That’s why I agreed to a necropsy because I hate grey areas in life. I want answers. And I now know that all the circumstances of what happened completely pointed towards anaphylaxis and anaphylactic shock as what caused Maezie’s death. I don’t believe a necropsy was needed to figure that out. And with not recognizing it, how much time are you going to lose in terms of making the right decision and making it in a timely fashion for treatment?

The vet administered atropine and epinephrine, but obviously the epinephrine didn’t get to Maezie soon enough. And when she was brought to me, there was diarrhea that I could smell even though she was in a blanket so I couldn’t see it. And I remember thinking her face looked puffy to me. Those things and lots of other things pointed towards anaphylaxis. I don’t know. Apparently Maezie was in serious trouble before even being hooked up to the anesthesia machine. I just hate to think about what they did to her body for the necropsy when the answer of anaphylaxis, at least in my mind, could’ve easily have been given to me without a necropsy being needed.

I’ve already decided that I don’t think I could even bear to go back to that clinic after what happened to Maezie there. So I am looking for a new main vet for Théo. And I just really don’t know how to decide which vet is the right vet for me and Théo. How do you come to a decision that a certain vet is competent and trustworthy when looking for a new vet? Of course I’ll always get second opinions if something seems wrong, but I’d like my main vet to be a really good one.