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One Example of Why We Work Hard To Avoid Using Vets

Breeding Bullmastiffs since 1983, we've naturally had many occasions to employ veterinarians. With a few rare exceptions, these encounters have been less than satisfactory and horrendously expensive. Here is a recent story.

My lovely three-year-old bitch Possum is dead. A week after an emergency C-section I took her back to see Scott Dieter, the vet who had done the surgery. The incision was draining. Possum had her first litter a year and a half before this one and was strong and healthy…but I'm hypervigilant on C-section healing issues because I had a bitch years ago who opened up after surgery. That situation had a happier outcome than this one.

Dieter, an employee of Frank Bostick, DVM, with offices in Lehighton and Tamaqua PA, told me the opening was only a superficial issue. He speculated that bacteria had gotten into the stitch line, and the skin anterior to the sutures had opened up because an abscess was draining. I have to say it didn't look like any abscess I've ever dealt with, but I foolishly thought he was the expert.

By the time I got Possum home, the drainage had pretty much stopped. The next day she also seemed better. Late on the afternoon of the third day when I cleaned her up before putting the puppies on her, two 1/4-inch places on the suture line had opened and I could see intestinal contents pushing out. Too late to go back to the vet that day. My plan was to make a third visit first thing the next morning. I washed Possum off, put antiseptic powder on the incision line and a sanitary pad secured by an ACE over it just to be sure no puppy toenails would get improperly involved. Then I put the puppies on her and left for about five minutes to tend to another doggie situation.

When I returned Possum was sitting in a pile of puppies and guts… blood all over the place, the ace bandage just where I'd placed it. I walked my girl over to the truck with a sheet wrapped around her holding her guts in place. When she didn't want to walk any further and laid down on the sheet I went about ten feet away to get the truck and back in so I could lift her in and get her to the Allentown emergency service. But when I turned around she was up, dragging her guts, a couple of cups of organs lying on the ground behind her.

If there was any blessing in this situation it was that I had some euthanasia stuff on hand. I injected it into her heart and sat with her – crying, singing and  screaming in frustration and anger until she died. It took twenty minutes.

Next morning I called Frank Bostick, who owns the vet practice, to talk to him about what had happened. At his request I made a settlement offer - a very reasonable one according the vet I consulted first. Bostick, who had obviously talked to Dieter before he returned my call, said he would call me back in five days when he'd had a chance to check into the matter. That time has long passed and I'm still waiting for a call.

The other vet I consulted said a week to ten days is the point when internal sutures start to dissolve, so if there's going to be a problem, that's when it happens. On my return visit, the vet who did the section and the follow-up visit never palpated Possum or took an X-ray… he just told me about the non-existent abscess.

What recourse do I have? I can sue for the return of the money I paid for the section and the follow-up visit. Maybe I can sue for the value of the puppies Possum would have had next year. I can incur more expense to do that. There's no lemon law for vets like there is for puppy breeders so the state attorney general probably isn't going to take much of an interest. I can contact the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Association. Maybe someone there will care more about my situation than the vets. Frankly I don't hold out much hope of that. Of course nothing I do now will bring Possum back or compensate for the agony she suffered, the agony I've had over this, the dreams my daughter still has about her own guts coming out. That stuff, we're just stuck with. Just like sometimes we're stuck with having to use a vet – but not in any situation where we can somehow possibly avoid it.