🚀 go-pugleaf

Comparing vets and doctors is really rather pointless - both go through 
an extensive training period but the similarity ends there, especially 
in the area of responsibility.  If a bad vet  (and there are a lot out 
there, especially with birds, my speciality) makes a mistake there is a 
dead pet and an upset family, but absolutely nothing happens to the vet. 
If a doctor makes a mistake and there is a dead person then all hell can 
break loose and the doctor may lose his livelihood.  

I only recently had a customer who had taken a sick budgie to a vet who 
diagnosed, on the basis of no pathology or tests, coccidiosis and worms 
and prescribed suitable drugs for the perceived problems.  A week later 
the bird was bought to me just before it died.  From its symptoms I 
diagnosed megabacteria, a very different disease, and this was confirmed 
by a veterinary autopsy which I paid for. When I phoned the original vet 
she said "whats megabacteria?", and it was only a $10 budgie so what did 
it matter!  Given the correct diagnosis that bird would almost certainly 
have survived and made a full recovery.  Its a bit like a doctor 
diagnosing flu when you have foaming at the mouth rabies!  

Another vet in my area ALWAYS diagnoses any sick parrot as having 
chlamydiosis, without tests and no matter what the symptoms.  Of course 
this requires a 6 week course of quite expensive medication to cure so no 
doubt that has a bearing on the diagnosis.  Fortunately for him the drug 
is pretty good at treating other problems as well, with only a weeks' 
treatment so he often gets away with it.

Having had a go at vets, I have to say that the good caring vets far 
outnumber the bad, and that their charges are not excessive considering 
the costs involved in running a surgery.  Similarly the fees charged even 
by the Qld RSPCA are not high in my opinion.  If anyone is not able or 
willing to pay $100 for a dog then they are not able to afford to feed, 
keep and pay necessary vet bills for that dog.  I would bet that there is 
a close relationship between the cost of the dog and its likelihood of 
being dumped.

By the way, by what authority do vets, with a Batchelor of Veterinary 
Science, call themselves Doctor?  I seem to remember that 20 or 30 years 
ago the vets were always Mr. (not many women vets back then).  Does that 
mean that someone with a Batchelor of Science in say physics can also 
call him(her)self Doctor?

cheers,  Mike Owen (who actually doesn't hate vets and even has some as 
friends).

  
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Cheers,  Mike Owen,  Mooloolaba,  Queensland,  Australia.
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to see where Mooloolaba is try:-
http://peg.pegasus.oz.au/~futurecom/map.htm