Your Pets, Your Vet, and the Truth

by Aimee Amodio | More from this Blogger

28 Mar 2008 04:23 PM

Your pets can't talk. They can't tell you or your veterinarian what hurts, or how they feel, or whether or not the treatments are helping.

Pets depend on their owners to be detailed -- and honest -- when reporting symptoms and behavioral changes. Owners often have to serve as translators between the vet and the animal. The more detailed you can be when describing a problem, the more ammunition your vet has to fight what's wrong.

For example:

• I think my dog has a stomach ache.
• My dog vomited partially-digested food this morning after she ate. In the yard, she was eating grass. She's been drinking lots of water, but won't touch her dinner.

The second description is far more useful to your veterinarian -- details can help speed the diagnosis and help ensure a correct diagnosis.

Lying about what is going on will only hurt your pet.

When Moose got hit by a car in June, I was upset... but I was also ashamed of myself. I blamed myself (I should have gotten a harness sooner, I should have managed him better while walking, I should have noticed the cat that he chased sooner...) It was hard to admit because I felt like a bad pet parent. But in the end, it wouldn't benefit Moose any to say "I don't know what happened." Explaining the truth with as much detail as possible was the first step in making things better.

The truth is even more important if you are trusting someone -- a friend, a family member, or a boarding facility -- to care for your pet in your absence. We recently had a cat at the boarding facility where I work who was diagnosed with a terminal illness... and the owners did not tell us. We didn't find out until we called her regular vet.

That's not fair to the cat. Our pets trust us to do the best we can for them.

Learn more about Aimee Amodio

Aimee is a fiction writer... dog lover... music lover...

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