Dr. Primm's Warm and Fuzzies

This blog has a few more followers than it did in the past (yay!), so I am going to rerun some of my 'memoirs'.  I hope that those of you who have read them before will not mind seeing them again and I hope that some of the new faces will really like them!  I will sprinkle them in as we move forward.  Happy Fall, Ya'll!

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As the time changes and things show down for the winter, we will not be offering Saturday appointments.  We know how busy we all are at home during these holiday times and we will, of course, still have our kennels available for boarding.  Being in a Seventh Day Adventist community, we find that few clients take advantage of our Saturday hours and since we only see patients until noon, often very sick pets must go to the ER any way. So Saturdays off will be the gift to our staff so they can spend time with their families and see out of town relatives.  Happy Holidays!

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We get a lot of phone calls (and a good bit of frustration) that we cannot tell owners what is wrong with their pet over the phone.But there is even more frustration that we cannot tell how much something is going to cost in a phone call.  Of course there are wellness services and products that have a predetermined price that we readily share several times a day.  Every service and item has a price in our computers. We certainly are not trying to keep them from anyone because we want to do things that are in a pet owner's budget or everyone has stress. What we cannot accurately do is make a diagnosis over the phone (which is what is required to give an accurate treatment plan and estimate) and then tell what it will cost to treat this disease. 
An example stands out in my memory.  A pet owner called with a very sick dog.  She was almost certain that he had swallowed a sock and wanted to know the cost of doing surgery to remove the sock.  We were easily able to share with her the cost of the examination and the radiograph that would be required to tell if and where the sock was lodged.  We explained that after those diagnostics, we would be able to tell her 1. If surgery was indicated  2. A rough cost estimate based on what other surgeries like that one had been 3. How much additional costs she might incur based on how sick her dog really was and how long he would likely be in the hospital.   She was not at all pleased and thought that it was ridiculous that we could not tell her on the phone.  I found out later that her dog had not eaten a sock at all and ended up dying of parvovirus.  Sadly, while she was calling multiple vets to try to insist on a surgical estimate, her dog was getting sicker and sicker and did not even need surgery.
Please understand that we are not trying to be difficult on such phone calls.  We just know from experience that things are often not what they seem. We know that we need to examine the pet to give a treatment plan that has any hope of being appropriate.  Even if you are sure that your pet has a certain thing wrong with him or her, let us do our jobs and make a diagnosis. If we have a diagnosis, we can give a more accurate cost estimate and your pet has a better chance of recovery.  And when your pet recovers, everyone wins!

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I hear clients and prospective clients ask about this issue all the time.  They say, "I buy brand X pet food at the local big-box discount store and it is very much cheaper than at a pet store or vet. It looks the exactly the same.  Why is that? Are you ripping me off?" So my staff and I explain the differences in bulk purchasing and customer service support and all of the reasons that you have heard before.
BUT I bought a formerly "salon only" hair product recently from a big box retailer.  It was not a knock off. It has the exact brand name that I used to associate with high end salon products. Incidentally, it was cheaper than what I remembered paying at the salon, but as far as hair products go, it was not cheap. I am here to tell you that this product is NOT the same as the ones that I used to buy from this company before their contract with the discount retailer.  So I did a little digging about this issue.
Chuck, our practice manager, is a retired chemist. He used to run plants that manufactured urethane foam products (like the foam used for pillows and cushions). At one point his factories were making a certain type of pillow that was sold on TV. His company got a contract to make the pillows for one of the big name discount stores. Chuck was thrilled that his production went up dramatically and he thought it was great...until he realized that in order to meet the price demanded by the big box store, he had to compromise on some things.  He learned that one "cannot have the cake and eat it too" because to make the contract demands, he had to decide which ingredients could be altered to make the pillows cheaper to manufacture or he could not pay his workers! There are other brands that I used to trust that got contracts with big box retailers and their quality has had to suffer. I understand why they have to make the decision to prioritize quantity over quality (because they are in business too), but I do not want you, my clients, to be misled and think that these products are identical.  In many cases, they just can't be.
Quality of ingredients is obviously less important for pillows and hair products than it is for something that you eat or feed your pets.  But sadly, the fact remains that you get what you pay for. I will not be buying hair products from the big box store and expecting them to be the same. You might choose to purchase some of your pet items from big box stores also, but I do want you to know that you may be compromising even though the product looks the same.  Be an educated consumer.  Ask around about products. We all want a good value.  I have lived and learned about many things and I too have to make choices.  One thing I know for sure is that I want to know what I am getting. I remember hearing all my life- "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

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I have been working on the September edition of Applebrook ANImail and I shared a rough draft with a regular client.  She liked it, but replied several things that I should include that she likes about us.  Suddenly it occurred to me that instead of just reading what we think and what we say, perhaps you would like to hear from other clients or maybe other veterinary professionals also.  So I plan to include a "Guest Contributor" in each edition.  If you have something that you would like to say about us, pets or questions that you would like answered, please let me know. I will try to include you too! 

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