Here's Why All Pet Owners Need to Avoid Chain Vets & Find An Independent Veterinary Practice

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Corporate control of veterinary care is not a good thing for our pets or for our wallets. Mars Pet Care, which already owns Banfield, has now purchased the VCA vet hospital chain. An explosive article in Bloomberg Business Week goes into detail on the questionable practices of these types of vet clinics, including unnecessary vaccine schedules and testing, as well as conflicts of interest, and how they adversely affect our pets' health as well as our pocketbooks. Here's a link to the article. It's long, but well worth reading: The High Cost, High Risk World of Corporate Pet Care

For a shorter summary of the article, here's a link to Bark Magazine's brand new article on this: 

Pet Health Care Monopoly

Please share this with every dog owner you know.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I'm wondering if you read the article? One of the biggest issues is the vaccine policies of these corporate owned chains. Those vaccine cocktails that people are lining up for to save some $$$ not only contain some unnecessary and potentially harmful vaccines, but they do not follow the AAHA recommendations for core vaccines. 

These places also have set, one-size-fits-all treatment policies that the vets are required to follow and not permitted to deviate from, or allowed to tailor a treatment plan to the individual patient. This is simply not the way good medicine is practiced, for dogs or for humans.  

[Frank & TeddyToyDoodle]

Yes, I read the article and the vaccine part was troubling.  I'm not an expert on this but on the surface, yes Karen, it does look problematic.

Again....if all vet centers were individually-owned you could probably come up with problems like this, too. And there might be many happy stories that this article did not cover.  There are many happy pet owners who utilize them -- if they didn't, then WOOF wouldn't have gotten bought out by Mars this week.

I'm not saying there aren't problems.  I'm saying the situation wasn't problem-free before and might not be as 1-sided as the BBW article indicates.

You know, my vet is independent and Teddy my 6-month old toy recently had a bad reaction to a shot. I asked why a 10 pound dog was getting the same amount of vaccine as a 50-pound dog and my vet (who isn't controlled by any corporate mandates) said it was the norm.  So again, I think the problems in the article ARE LEGIT -- I'm just saying they aren't exclusive to corporate-owned vet centers.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I'll just say that the fact that a lot of people do something or use something doesn't mean that it's a good thing to do or use. It often means the people don't know any better. 

Education is power. We can't make informed choices without it. I personally think it's important for pet owners to be aware of these issues, and what each of us chooses to do with the information is up to the individual.

[F, Calla & Luca]

Amen.

[Frank & TeddyToyDoodle]

I agree.  But even vets -- independent or corporate -- aren't God.  They don't know the answer to everything.  With vaccines, there are risks to doing it and not doing it.  I want to know more about if a 1-time shot is good for 1 year or 3 years or 7 years.  But if the experts, folks with MDs and DECADES of experience can't agree, how the heck can I/we ?

I was told that the 2nd shot for Teddy in a 2-shot regimen would be tough, the 1st one shouldn't be a problem. Instead, I almost thought Teddy was dying he was so out of it with the 1st shot. The 2nd shot was a piece of cake.

Sometimes, you just never know.........LOL

[Stacy]

I'm so glad you posted this Karen! I read about this earlier this week on The Consumerist and I was wondering what the doodle community would think of it. The emergency vet that saved Ava in the middle of the night is a VCA clinic. It used to be independently owned, but sold sometime in the last decade. And the other area 24 hour emergency vet is Blue Pearl, which it made it sound like is also part of that conglomerate. I'm still reading the article that you linked to, and I have other thoughts, but I wanted to comment on the vaccine thing first. 

I agree that they are really pushing to vaccinate unneccessarily, but everywhere we go, from the groomers to the doggy daycare, to a boarding facility, requires all of these shots yearly and they require bordatella every 6 months. When Katie was little I was taking her to doggy daycare and the vets office specifically told me that the bordatella was good for a year and doggy daycare still wanted her to have it again after 6 months. They didn't care what the actual medical professional said. So we quit doggy daycare. And I found a groomer that didn't require vaccine records to cut her hair. My vet (after careful consideration I decided to go back to him) after a certain age stops giving everything but rabies and just gives you a shot record that says they have had everything else. But my point is that until the general public accepts that all these shots aren't necessary, even if the vet community accepts that it is, they're still going to have to have them to go all the places that we want to go. I think that is something that really needs to be addressed on a larger scale with the general dog population. I wish I had a good answer to that problem!

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I think that rather than requiring the shots "yearly", these facilities need to update themselves on current veterinary recommendations (the AAHA vaccine protocol came out in 2003, for Heaven's sake!) and require that the dogs be up to date on their shots. That's a small but significant adjustment. 

I've never used any daycare, and have only ever boarded a pet at my vet's office, but going back to 1977, I've continuously had dogs going to training classes and grooming facilities, and never once have I had trouble with vaccine requirements; even with Jack, who gets titered for everything except rabies & bordatella. They only want verification that the dog is UTD on everything. Rescues work the same way when checking vet references on potential adopters or fosters; we want to know that the person keeps their dogs UTD, and in fact, some of us give "extra credit" to pet owners who are savvy enough and concerned enough about their pets' health to vaccinate less frequently. 

I agree that the general public still needs educating, which is one reason I posted this discussion and asked people to share it. That's the best we can do. 

[Frank & TeddyToyDoodle]

What shots are the most abused -- rabies, distemper, Lyme, etc. ?

Which shots are being given annually that we can go a few years without updated/boosting ?

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

There are three year versions of the three core vaccines available. None of them ever needs to be given yearly. Everything else (lepto, Lyme, etc) is an individual decision based on benefit/risk factors such as geography, life style, overall health, age, etc. 

Here's the UC-Davis protocol, it's probably the best guideline available, and it should answer all of your questions: http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/vmth/small_animal/internal_medicine/n...

[Frank & TeddyToyDoodle]

Thanks Karen !

[Stacy]

That makes so much sense to me! Sometimes I feel like I live in the least progressive place on earth. 

Katie had a grooming appointment - this was probably a year and a half ago. It was at the place where she had doggy daycare and they called me the day before the appointment and told me that her bordatella was more than 6 months old and she couldn't come to be groomed until she had it. I found a new and better groomer, but some of the places around here are real sticklers about things. 

I always boarded at my vet, who didn't make me vaccinate to board, but they stopped doing it. And I don't think any of the fancy boarding kennels around here will take them without the stupid yearly shots. My solution is just to stay home or take them with me. But I am also very overprotective and I have a hard time leaving them.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I think it would pay to have a conversation with the administrators of the boarding facility about the issue of "yearly" versus "UTD", i.e. "my dog has had the three year vaccine within the past three years", lol. Policy often is set according to the common denominator, which in some areas might mean a dog who hasn't had vaccines within the past year is overdue for his shots, but reasonable policy makers should be able to understand that your dog IS UTD, which is all that matters. It's worth making a phone call. 

Back when JD was out and about around other dogs, he did get the bordatella vaccine twice a year. But, he gets the intranasal version, and he gets it as a tech appt. We go in whenever it's convenient, the tech puts the vaccine up his big schnozz, lol, and I pay for nothing other than the vaccine, which I want to say is $15 or $18. That's a huge savings. It's also one benefit of using a private, independent veterinary practice. With their patients who are seen regularly, and are UTD on everything, there is no vet visit or exam required at my vet's office for things like bordatella vaccine or in JD's case, his monthly B12 injections, as long as the vet has ordered them in his records, and you pay for only the vaccine, B12, or whatever. Try doing that at Banfield, lol.