Awwwwwww that's sweet! Sounds like really good customer service. I'm glad you found a place willing to work with you to make sure she's well cared for!
Thank you! Me too!
Shelby's vets in the BM were so awesome. I was not happy about having to leave them. And I definitely had anxiety over the need to find Shelby a new vet here. I needed someone close by, due to not having a car anymore. And so many people got dogs during the pandemic, some vets now (including the vets who we used in the BM) are not accepting new patients currently because their practices are full. So I worried about running into that problem here too. And I had first hand experience that not all vets are awesome.
The vets that the rescue from which we adopted Shelby use are awful. I had to make multiple trips there with dogs we were fostering for the rescue (including Trudy, who I ended up adopting), and I can say nothing good about them. They are in the habit of separating your animal from you the second you walk into the building. Before you've even made it to the reception desk to check in, a vet tech is there dragging your pet away. They do all procedures behind closed doors and don't even speak to the humans until they're done.
I had to take Trudy there to be speyed. They immediately whisked her away from me. "Go home. We'll call you when we're done." But when I went back to pick her up they said, "Oh, she can't leave. She's dehydrated and hypothermic." Because they had tried to cut corners so had not given her an IV for the surgery!
I insisted on seeing Trudy. And she was so relieved to see me! She was weak, but wagging her tail, licking me, leaning into me. She did not want to leave my side!
I asked them to show me how to work the IV (that they now wanted to give her) so I could take her home. But she wasn't legally my dog at that point in time. So the vets called the person who ran the rescue, and she accepted their advice that Trudy needed to stay at the clinic. But I could not stay with her. Because the clinic was closing for the night and had no overnight staff!
They made a poor, sick, frightened dog stay alone in a cage overnight so they could give her an IV and a heating blanket she would not have needed if they'd just taken care of her properly during the surgery to begin with!
Thankfully, Trudy survived that night, and I went back to pick her up the next morning. When I got her home and examined her I discovered that not only had they shaved her belly (necessary for the surgery) and three of her legs (one for the IV I could understand, but why three?) but they had cut her at every site they had shaved! Multiple big nasty red gashes everywhere. WTF? I did not realize right away that they had also shaved and cut her neck.
Because rescue dogs are a high flight risk, the rescue asks fosters to keep their foster dog's collars on them at all times. So I did not discover Trudy's neck cuts until they got infected and puss from her infected wounds leaked out around the edges of her collar.
Then, to make matters worse, the vet had done a shit job of stitching Trudy up after her surgery. Her wound re-opened. And I had to take her back to be re-stitched.
I was not happy! First, the vet tried to blame me for the problem. He said I had let her lick the wound. (Uh, no. We kept the Elizabeth collar on her so she couldn't lick it, and she was with either me or my mother 100% of the time, so was never left unsupervised.) Then I insisted on going back into the surgery with her. Trudy was terrified of being separated from me by those people, and there was no way I was going to let them butcher her again! But when I got back into the surgery it quickly became obvious that the vet techs were not going to be able to work with me there. They were not used to being watched, and it made them very nervous.
Trudy was the gentlest dog ever. She was a big, goofy, loving Golden Retriever who didn't have an aggressive bone in her body. (She did not even respond with aggression when other dogs who we met on the street growled or snarled at her. Instead, she would run behind me and hide!) But these vet techs, instead of being gentle with Trudy and coaxing her to do what they wanted, ganged up on her. Three of them worked together to manhandle Trudy and physically restrain her. And then they had the nerve to tell me Trudy was upset because she could sense that I was nervous.
I wasn't nervous. I was frakking angry! But the vet techs were definitely nervous, knowing that I was there watching them and judging them. So I left the surgery in the hope that might enable them to get the job done and just hoped Trudy's trauma would be over quickly.
When I ended up adopting Trudy, you better believe I swore to her she would never have to go back to those horrible vets ever again!
So yeah: I was worried about needing to find a new vet for Shelby. Would I be able to find her a wonderful medical team like the one we left behind in the BM? Or would the only vets in my neighbourhood be horrible, like the clinic the rescue in Chatham used? So I was very happy when we received the enthusiastic and unreserved recommendation for this nearby clinic from a neighbour, and relieved when we went to check them out and everything seems to gel with what we were told.
The last couple of years have been very hard on Shelby. First with losing Trudy, then my father, then my mother (who's still alive and actually a little bit improved physically--but Shelby doesn't know this), and then needing to move house under extremely stressful circumstances and leaving behind all of Shelby's old friends in the BM. And Shelby was my rock through all of that. I want her to have the best possible life I can give her now for whatever time she has left!
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The Sonoran Desert
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for the hugs, the doc, and Shelby's registration 
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