What You Probably Don't Know About Your Pet Veterinarian

As anyone knows who's taken their pet in for emergency healthcare, it can turn out to be every bit as expensive and can involve nearly as much high-tech, as caring for humans. Americans spend $15 billion on their pets' health. Per-visit costs are rising too - they stand at about $250 a visit for a dog and $200 a visit for a cat.

What does your pet vet do to charge so much? Well, pet owners demand that level of health care for their pets. When you need to do cancer surgery and kidney transplants and MRIs for pets, it takes that much.

At one time, you went to the pet veterinarian just to get your pet his shots. Veterinary practices have come to depend on these, too - no matter what, they could always depend on having you come in to get those shots for your pet. Of course, these days, your pet veterinarian has a lot of other healthcare services to provide. And he'll grudgingly admit the truth now - pet vaccinations don't do much good.

To begin with, those vaccinations are not really well-designed ones. They give your pet all kinds of diseases right from epilepsy to cancer. And then there are the allergic reactions. Some vaccinations protect your pet for a lifetime, too. You don't really need to take your pet in for those shots every year.

Even if you can end up spending as much with your vet as you would with a doctor for a person, you'll find that vets are not regulated the way real doctors are. For instance, if a veterinarian has his license suspended for malpractice, you'd never know about it. Once he gets his license back, there's no system in place that could let you know. A pet veterinarian doesn't even have to be qualified to be a pet veterinarian.

You could easily just take a weekend course and hang out a shingle. If you really want to know that your pet is in good hands, you need to go to the website of the AVMA to look at their list of specialists who are really qualified. Once a person qualifies to be a veterinarian, there is no law that says that he has to qualify separately in each specialty - dentistry or orthopedic care whatever - before he practices it. He can just read a few books on his own and start practice. You don't want your dog to go through anything with this kind of a veterinarian. Make sure that you look for ones that are qualified.