Today was a rough day.
I work at a veterinary hospital as a technician's assistant, and we had some pretty nasty cases. But what stood out to me and said "write an entry!" was the nature of two of the patients there today, with such similar stories to ones I've seen in the past.
The first was a little dog with hideous recurring ear infections and a nasty, nasty eye. This eye was swollen to twice its normal size, bulging out of the head, covered with red veins and mucous. This obviously did not develop overnight. In fact, the owners first noticed a problem with the eye three weeks ago. But they decided not to bring the dog in until now. The eye smells hideous and has begun to rot. There is no hope of treating the eye or recovering vision, as there well might have been sooner. Now the eye is literally rotting out of the dog's skull.
The next, another dog, had terrible pain in its front legs, shoulders, and neck. The owners thought it wasn't able to walk, although it turned out the dog can, it just doesn't want to. Whenever we touched the front of this dog's body at all, it screamed, and I do mean *screamed* with pain. A simple physical exam caused the dog to defecate on the table while screaming, crying, and fighting us with all its might. The owners first noticed this pain three days ago. (And yes, we do have Saturday hours and emergency openings.) Yet the dog was not brought to see us until today, after days of excruciating pain.
I had to help with x-rays on the second dog, watching with tears in my eyes as we tried to position it in the least painful way possible. I felt like a monster while we stretched its arms in the postures needed for the doctor to make a diagnosis. We had to dose the dog with tranquilizers and still it cried and struggled. All the while, I felt a deep resentment rising in me towards the owners. Why had they not done something sooner?
If you or I were in pain so severe we could barely walk, we would surely call a doctor right away, or even take ourselves to the emergency room. If you or I had a child with an eye problem, we would schedule an appointment as soon as we noticed it. Why, then, do people take responsibility for a living being, a notably loving and loyal creature, and then let it suffer for so long when it is injured or ill?
I have another example. A large dog came into our clinic with vomiting and bloody diahrrea. (I'm being deliberately vague about the breeds to protect client privacy.) Now I don't know how long the owners waited to bring this dog in; I think it was a couple of days. But what shocked me was what they decided to do next.
One of our doctors reccomended that the dog be on iv fluids and hospitalized so its condition could be monitored and bed rest enforced. The owner, balking at the expense of treatment, told us "I have a friend who is an EMT [for humans.] I want to take the dog home and let my friend put him on an iv."
Now for those of you who might think this is reasonable, think of this. If you had a sick child, and took him to the hospital, and the doctor put in an iv and reccomended a several night stay, would you check your child out and let "your friend who is an EMT" put him on fluids? More to the point, would you take your sick human child to a veterinary technician to be put on fluids? The two areas of expertise are not the same. Rates are different, medications are frequently different, doses are different...the entire internal chemistry of humans and dogs differs greatly. Even dogs and cats differ to a degree. Would you trust an expert in one, no matter how good, with caring for the other when a life is at stake?
For most people, doing such a thing to a human child would be unthinkable. We feel an obligation to protect human children because we love them, we have agreed, through birth or adoption, to take on their care, and because they usually can't speak for themselves on such matters. And what of our pets? We love them, we have agreed to care for them, and they cannot speak for themselves. If you can't handle that obligation, you shouldn't own an animal, no matter how well-intentioned you might be.
Please be good to your four-footed friends!
--LL