It seems animal health care is a topic on my mind right now. Just like how we
have to visit the dentist and the physician regularly, we should take our
animals to the veterinarians office regularly.

Sometimes a visit will not cost much, but usually like with human health care
it can cost an arm and a leg, but with dogs and cats it could cost four paws.

I am not going to openly say which of these veterinarian practices disappointed
me or my family, but I would like to provide some customer service advice so
you can keep your customers and do a better job.

First, I did lose a dog in 2008 and it was very heartbreaking. My sister
adopted a dog which was a gift from her boyfriend where the dog ran away to his
house to escape a dysfunctional owner and we had a loving relationship for the
last four years of its life. Because this dog was not a purebred, it had longer
legs than a normal corgi where it allowed the dog to jump over six foot fences
and that did not help this dog's quality of life where we thought it had
digestive problems, but due to making such a high jump its intestines got
tangled which caused the dog to have a sad end.

Two or three months before we had the sad end, the veterinarian my father used
for the last decade plus did the best they could, but even with specialist dog
food and some injections the dog was still feeling bad. If the vet had a x-ray
machine we would of known what was going wrong. We blew almost 1,000 dollars at
the emergency clinic at the bitter end. Maybe if we put the dog down when if it
was known the situation would be hopeless we could of saved some money and
grief.

Maybe because we did not seek a second opinion early enough to have a better
ending, but we learned to get a second opinion in the future. I know doctors
and veterinarians are not faith healers, but they do the best job they can.


 

The new vet we got after the sad experience did a decent job with the new corgi
my sister got when she was in school in Las Vegas. Only thing that made me
uncomfortable was we were not able to see what they were doing to the dog, but
it made me and my sister uneasy. Maybe it is due to that practice having a
smaller building, but you never know what is going on.

The trigger that annoyed my sister was when she got a new corgi from a breeder
she had to take it in to the vet for a new puppy exam so she would know what is
right and wrong with the dog she purchased, and the vet retrograded in his
customer service which led us to flee his practice.

The breeder applied two of the shots the puppy needed, but the vet said those
shots were not good enough and ended up telling my sister you are going to have
these shots if you like it or not. My sister was fearful that the vet was going
to overdose or make her new puppy sick.

Then the new corgi was discovered to have a hernia and also heart murmur
problems. That freaked out my sister, but the vet actually did not have tactful
customer service skills and said you should of brought the puppy back to the
breeder to get a new puppy. It would be like if you gave birth to a child with
down's syndrome and the obstetrician said you should of aborted the baby or
sent it for adoption.

That led to my sister firing the vet and having the vet end up losing three
clients, her two corgis and her boyfriend's corgi.

Now we had to travel to Rancho Cucamonga for our new veterinarian.  The
practice seems inviting and able for my sister's new puppy. They are a bit
tactful and more empathetic. At least this vet was polite enough to say "we do
not have a respirator to do the surgery for the hernia that is near his
liver/abdomen, but you should go to the specialist". And the vet said if you
take care of the hernia his heart and breathing issues would ease up and the
puppy would have a good life ahead.

I will talk about the visit to the specialist in Irvine in a future post.
     ~ I am on twitter: @thinktank79 on Twitter ~
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