I hate when vets retire. :-(
Took Journey to see a vet tonight just for a weigh in and exam, mostly for the experience of it for her and because she pants a lot so I just wanted to make sure it wasn't a heart concern or anything. Good news. She's fine. Perfectly healthy. Just hot apparently.
But I was thoroughly unimpressed with the clinic. I went there because Toller people recommend them as the clinic supposedly has a couple of more holistically minded vets, and I specifically requested one highly recommended vet in particular. We get into the exam room, wait a half hour even though nobody else was there, and then finally a person walks in. Apparently she was a vet... I thought she was a tech/assistant, or I would have said something right away. She was NOT the vet I requested. Not at all. She was vaccine pushy, food pushy, pushy in any way that you can think of. Not willing to listen at all, didn't even hardly do an exam until I said "well, aren't you going to listen to her heart or check her out at all?", and wanted to pump her full of a combo vax PLUS rabies PLUS dewormer and thank goodness she didn't ask what I feed. And then she tried using scare tactics to get me to vaccinate Journey against a million and one different things "Well I just put down two puppies this week for Parvo" and "last week I saw a cat infected with rabies" and blah blah blah. I get that these diseases are a concern, but I'm not going to shock my poor puppy's system by giving her a bunch of stuff at once. That's just what I believe in, and why I went with a breeder who feels the same way. I don't need some vet I've never met in my life, who talked to me like this was my first pet ever, to shove garbage down my throat in a pathetically uneducational way.
I'm just so aggravated. I wish I'd said something as soon as she came in and I realized she wasn't who I booked the appointment with. The whole reason I went to this clinic is because I wanted to avoid a debate about the way I choose to raise my puppy, and I definitely avoided none of that and just left feeling mad and upset.
I definitely will not be going there again. I'm sure the vet I was supposed to see is actually a good vet and a nice person, but this experience was horrible and the staff at the front did nothing to make me feel any better. They seemed rather simple, and obviously didn't book the appt how I requested. I'm all about giving second chances, but not when it comes to my dog's health, and not when we already had a bad experience with their sister clinic as well in the past.
Here's to hoping the vet my adult dogs go to will be willing to listen. Food and vaccines have never come up there yet because I know that their clinic is full of yucky food and they seem the type to push vaccines, but they're friendly and nice and hopefully will listen and respect how I feel.