29/01/2022
Invest in and maintain your relationship with your vet. When you get all your vaccines at the feed store or use a lay floater (who really shouldnât be able to administer sedation) or rely heavily on Dr. Google to diagnose that cough or squinty eye, and only call the vet when all else has failed, you may find out how hard it is to get a vet to come out.
Itâs not that we donât care, itâs just very hard to drop everything weâre doing, rearrange a schedule that was carefully planned to improve efficiency, or maybe even pull ourselves away from a long overdue dinner with friends or time with family for someone who weâve never met or who only calls every three or four years. And there are fewer and fewer large animal vets out there because of the financial and emotional toll this type of practice takes.
If you have your vetâs number posted but canât remember the last time you saw them, get in touch to schedule a wellness visit so that they are familiar with your location and your animals, can discuss preventive care, and are available as a resource to you if an emergency arises.
In most states a vet canât legally give any medical advice over the phone if they havenât physically seen your animals within 12 months.
Following is some important food for thought courtesy of AAEP member Dr. Matt Witzel:
"Iâm writing this because it needs to be said for the betterment of the profession that I love, AND the well-being and health of your horses. I apologize for the length of this and feel free to skip to the last 3 paragraphs if youâre in a time crunch.
As horse owners, how hard has it been for you to find a vet that is available all the time for your animals? Did you know right now there is a huge demand for more equine vets? In my graduating class from vet school thereâs only about 5 of us (out of close to 100) that are still working on horses. That number is down significantly compared to how many of us were dedicated equine oriented vet students.
The fact is, there is a general exodus of younger veterinarians from equine practice that switch to small animal medicine because it pays better and lacks after hours emergencies. Equine practices as a general population, however, provide emergency services 24/7 for their clients because large animal emergency-specific hospitals are extremely rare. I shouldnât have to say this but emergencies are never fun. We donât wake up in the morning hoping for a horse to colic, or some kidâs first horse to break a leg. We donât enjoy leaving our kids right before tucking them into bed to go see a bad laceration. Itâs not fun to rearrange our 8 hour day into a 12 hour day so that we can fit in a choke thatâs an hour and a half drive out of our way. Itâs all awful. But we do it because it needs to be done.
The difference between the pay in the vet industry is based on the fact that you bring your dog or cat to their vet who will work on them while working on 2 or more others at the same time. Small animal vets are therefore able to see many more patients in a day. Equine vets on the other hand will most of the time be working on a single patient at a time, focusing 90% of their attention (phone calls happen during exams, itâs a thingâŚ) on YOUR HORSE. Sometimes thereâs significant travel time between appointments. Itâs possible to spend 6 hours of a 12 hour work day in the truck and only see 4-5 cases in that time. Why???? Because weâre dedicated to your horsesâ wellbeing and some people donât have a trailer. Or some people donât feel comfortable hauling a trailer on icy winter roads in MT. I get that and I donât blame those people. Itâs just something that needs to be accepted so we can move on.
With the growth in horse ownership that weâve seen recently and the increasing demand for vet work with a simultaneous lack of available young equine vets that are willing to put up with the conditions listed above, Iâve come to the obvious conclusion that something needs to change.
Hereâs my request to you:
Please appreciate your local vet. Please be loyal to him or her. Please donât think of your vet as someone to call only when your horse is about to die because you didnât want to pay for an emergency fee last night when treatment would have mattered. Please ask to discuss costs up front if thatâs an issue for you rather than stating youâd do anything and everything necessary for your horse then turn around and complain about the bill. On that note, please compare medical costs of your animals to medical costs for yourself BEFORE insurance kindly tells you what your copay is. Please let your vet be involved with your horsesâ wellness before it becomes a problem. Please consult your vet with horse health questions instead of an internet based forum.
And last but not least⌠please consider using your local vet for things like dentals, vaccines, and lamenesses rather than someone traveling from out of town. Income from these routine services enable service expansion and improved care. That includes things like mobile digital X-ray, endoscopy, or ultrasound equipment so that we can accurately diagnose and successfully treat your sick animal.
I want you to think long and hard about taking away the enjoyable work and needed income from us and giving that to someone who you donât have a relationship with, who might be practicing those procedures ILLEGALLY (dentistry for instance can only legally be performed in Montana by a veterinarian or under the direct visual supervision of a licensed veterinarian; âequine dentistsâ who do not fall under these categories are not properly trained to handle dental diseases and have been known to cause more harm than good), who wonât be available when your horse has a joint injection reaction, who wonât get out of bed to come to your place and help get your hypothermic geriatric horse off the ground before it freezes to death.
All of us as veterinarians put a lot into the relationships that we build with our clients and itâs because of those relationships that we dedicate ourselves to becoming better at what we do and trying harder to keep your horses healthy. So when we find out that you use a traveling vet or a non-veterinarian dentist for your horses dental work because itâs $20 or $30 dollars cheaper, youâve just put a price on what our commitment is worth to you."
