Errr that site ripped me off! help?

The urine test reveals exactly what is wrong. It might not be a bacterial infection, even though that is the most likely cause. Your first vet understood you were cost sensitive and did the cheap thing first.

Your new vet let her desire to know exactly what was wrong overrule what ever suspicion she had that you were cost sensitive. As it turns out, if the antibiotics had not cured your first dog, you would have needed to go back for a urine test anyway. And hopefully when the urine test comes back, all you will need to pay the second vet for is antibiotics.

Our specialist vet is like your second vet, and we have to keep her curiosity in check. Otherwise, we and the dog will be living in our car.

The way many people would see it, your first (cheaper) vet was ripping you off by shortchanging you. Let me explain. When a dog has incontinence, especially an older dog, there are numerous possible reasons.

Several of these potential reasons cause blood in the urine, and several don't. Your first vet didn't determine if your dog had a bladder infection (a urine dip test can't do that). She only determined that there was blood in the urine.

Based on that, she guessed that there was a simple bladder infection and sent you home with a general, broad spectrum antibiotic. It was inexpensive and it worked, so you were happy. But what if it hadn't worked?

Would you have been happy then? What if you gave your dog an antibiotic and it really had bladder stones? Or crystals in the urine?

Or bladder cancer? Or kidney disease? Or a blood clotting problem?

Or an infection that was resistant to common antibiotics? All of these things are common, and simply prescribing antibiotics won't fix them. But prescribing based on a guess does delay important treatment if the guess is wrong, which can sometimes end in very serious consequences.

By sending urine tests off to the lab, your new vet can get not just the information on the dip test, but also have someone look at the urine sediment under the microscope to determine if the bladder cells look normal, see if there's any crystals, see if there's more white blood cells than red blood cells (which usually indicates infection rather than bleeding), and see if there's bacteria. They can also culture the urine to determine what kind of bacteria is present, and subject the bacteria to various antibiotics to determine if it is resistant to any, and which one is likely to work the best. As you can see, your vet will get a lot of important information.

Most people eventually chose a vet based on a balance of cost vs. risk. You first (cheaper) vet was low cost, but her practice style had you taking all the risks (whether you knew it or not). In your case the risk paid off, but you can bet that she has lots of patients that aren't getting well after the first (or second or third) visit because she's not very thorough about testing/verifying her suspicions.

On the other hand, your new vet is more expensive, but that's because she's more thorough and confirms her suspicions with lab tests. In all likelihood, most of her patients with basic problems get well after the first visit. But you end up paying more when you reduce the risk of a misdiagnosis.

And there's the problem -- reducing risk is expensive, and there's no way to keep things BOTH cheap and risk-free. So you need to decide what balance you prefer, more risk or more cost, and then communicate this to your vet. Most vets will decrease the number of tests ordered if you tell them that you have financial concerns, and that you will accept higher risk in exchange for a cheaper price.

But unless you tell him/her, a thorough vet will always recommend what he/she thinks is best for your pet, which will be whatever provides the best treatment at the lowest risk on the first try.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.