Leave him alone!

[Sunsetsky]

We have one particular client who always brings her dog in. She has many stories to tell.

He is booked up!!

This particular story isn't just one incident. She does this all the time. The clinic I work at gets incredibly busy and we find ourselves usually booking a week out with appointments. However our vets do make a couple of extra time slots each morning for emergencies. However, despite the fact that we have the word 'clinic' in the business name we are actually a full vet hospital. So we have just about everything we need to handle emergencies. Because of this we usually book those emergency slots quite quickly.

This client will allow her pet to only see one of our vets. He is a very popular vet and his emergency slots are usually the first to go. I can't remember the last time she actually made a regular appointment. Usually she wants to get in on the same day over something that isn't even an emergency (my dog sneezed, the dog upstairs is sick, there is a tiny lump on her, she looked at me funny and I just knew something was wrong). Usually the conversations go like this:

SC: I need to get in to see Dr. F. My dog sneezed and I need her looked at.
Me: I do have an opening with him early next week. Otherwise I did have a cancellation with a different doctor this week.
SC: No...it has to be Dr. F. Can't you check with him to see if he can just get me in today.
Me: I don't have any emergency slots left over with him. If you want in today then you can get in with a different doctor.
SC: No...it has to be Dr. F. He knows my dog the best.
Me: I'll leave a message for him and he can call you back.
SC: Can't you just ask him now?
Me: No. He's in the room with a client (or surgery). He'll call you back when he's done.

So usually I'll leave a note for him to call her back. And 90% of the time she'll call back about 20 minutes later asking if he was ready to talk to her yet. Most of the time he'll get her in and when her appointment is done we'll sometimes find out that she has no money to pay us with.


I leik coins

Now with this client...we aren't allowed to bill her. We tried doing that once or twice in the past and didn't see the money for a very long time. In one incident we told her we couldn't bill she demanded to speak with our manager and ripped into her. Calling her a lot of nasty names. It was bad to the point where our manager cried (but didn't give in) but we weren't allowed to fire the SC (we have fired SCs before). So whenever Mrs. Special comes in I warn the manager to hide in the back and one of us other girls would deal with her (SC likes me for some reason and calls me "Hunny" all the damn time).

Well for this situation the client wanted us to bill her. Her dog is on prescription food and she wanted to pay later. Told her that we couldn't bill and she said she would get the money together for the food somehow.

Oh she got the money together alright...

She comes in and gets the two cases of food. Her total is $43. She hands me $2 and then dumps a huge thing of coins onto the counter...

I sat there for about ten minutes counting out $41 in change. And I made her stand there and wait until I was done.


Leave him alone!

Yesterday we had another client call. Her older rabbit was looking pretty bad and she felt it was time to let him go. She asked if her husband could come by and drop the rabbit off. We tell her to go ahead and have her husband bring the rabbit in for a drop off euthanasia.

Well the husband comes in and SC shows up at the same time. The client with the rabbit isn't sure if the rabbit is still alive at this point and asked for one of our techs to check. While the technician is in the back checking on the rabbit, I'm checking out SC. Afterwards SC realizes what the rabbit is there for and begins badgering our other client with questions about it (she sounded almost hysterical).

"Did he die!"
"Why?"
"What happened?"
"Was he old?"
"Was he sick?"

The other client just kind of gave her halfass answers. He didn't seem to be really broken down about the rabbit (I think the rabbit belonged to his daughters) but damn...he didn't deserve to have to listen to that. I wanted to apologize to him about her once she left but I decided it would be wiser to keep my mouth shut incase I got into trouble.

[BookstoreEscapee]

If someone did that to me when I was dealing with a dying pet I don't know what I'd do. Even if it wasn't "my" pet I would be devastated.

[Hobbs]

Why, exactly, can't you fire her? She seems more of a headache to me...

[MaseMan]

Yeah...she is a PITA and can't or won't pay consistently? What is the big obligation in continuing to serve her?

[Sunsetsky]

The vet who see's SC's dog didn't want us to. It honestly surprised me when he told us not to. He let us fire his clients before.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Maybe he just likes the dog...

[bainsidhe]

Is the vet fully aware of the trouble she causes not just you, but other patients? He may feel sorry for her, since it sounds like she's of limited means and her life revolves around her pet. He may not know just how horrible she is to other owners/patients. The rabbit guy made me .

[DGoddessChardonnay]

If someone did that to me when I was dealing with a dying pet I don't know what I'd do. Even if it wasn't "my" pet I would be devastated.

Same here. If possible, I would be in the same room as the pet when it was being put to sleep.

[Kristev]

My old tomcat, ruled me for 8 years. I loved him so much, and he loved me. We were inseperable when we were at home (his choice.)

He had asthma, and we didn't know it. So when he started to cough and we couldn't help him, my ex and I rushed him straight to an emergency vet. We were too late, and as they started trying to help him, there was nothing they could do.

He died in my arms, I mean I literally held him as he died. Malcolm (his name) rubbed my arm deliberately, and then gave up on himself.

I was devastated, and I couldn't handle it. My ex called my mother.

Yes, I loved my cat. I have another cat now, and I've had her for about three years. She's a great cat, and I enjoy her so much.

But I still deeply, badly miss Malcolm.

[Munkie]

I had this beautiful Turkish Angora named Snowball in my grade 11 year. I was like, 16 at the time. She was *my* kitty, or I was *her* human, either way, we were inseperable. She would always lay on my chest in the sphinx position with her paws on my jaw or neck and purr until I fell asleep. I would never move at night because of this. (I have pictures my dad took at 6am to prove she lay on me all night)

One day, I discovered she had a lump on her chest that she had licked raw. We took her in to the vet a few days later, and the vet told us she had breast cancer. We had the lump removed, and she was a-ok for a while. This was in November-ish. Well, come late May, lump's back and we take her in the next day for x-rays. Two days later, doc calls us back in and we get the news - she's got limited time, as the cancer spread to her lungs. Gave us the choice of keeping her as she was, or putting her down.

Well, I said I had to think about it. For two weeks I thought about it, hard and long. I watched as she would curl up next to me instead of on me, her legs out at all awkward angles and her purr a faint echo of what it had been. Her bright blue eyes (i mean, like, perfect-summer-day-blue) faded to a grey blue. She looked tired all the time. But she was a fighter, she was.

I told my dad that I wanted to have her put down, because, much as I loved her, I couldn't see her lingering until she died without me there.

June 20th is and always will be my worst day EVER.

I miss her so much. I didn't want to ever give her up. So i'm right there with anyone who's ever lost a pet. And no one needs to get the third-degree when their pet (or a relative's pet) goes in to be put down.

(it's been 10 years since Snowball died and I *still* cry when I think about how I lost her.)

Sorry for the threadjack.

[Sunsetsky]

Sorry for the threadjack.

Don't worry about it. You're fine. I've been in the same boat before. My family and I used to have a black lab. She began to limp one day and we took her to the vet. They did an xray and found something that looked odd in it so they sent off a biopsy and the results were that she had cancer and had about 2 to 8 months left to live. We ended up putting her to sleep two days after my birthday. That happened five years ago this past December and I still miss the hell out of her.

BookstoreEscapee - I'm not sure. Maybe. He did talk to her and told her if she slips up badly again then she's going bye bye. So she's been on her "best" behavior.

[Snowbird]

Kristev and Munkie, I empathize very much. I lost my cat, had her for almost 15 years and I was devastated when it was her time. I still miss her.

The thing that stands out about that day though, is the training assistant in the office made a bit of a blunder when it was all done. She knew I was very upset and was trying to make it better but popped in and routinely said, "Have a nice day." I laughed, but I think it was to keep from sobbing hysterically.

[Sonoma]

If you're truly an animal lover, having one put down is one of the hardest things to go through, even when you're not actually the owner. I've had to do it twice. Once was for my cat. I was with him the whole time, and was crying through the whole thing. The second time I was house-sitting, and their old horse colicked, and no amount of treatment was helping her. We made the decision to put her down that night. I was holding her lead rope the entire time, and I was crying throughout the whole event too, even though she wasn't my horse.