The Little Book of Dog Care: Expert Advice on Giving Your Dog Their Best Life by Ace Tilton Ratcliff

Author:Ace Tilton Ratcliff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S/Simon Element
Published: 2023-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

Emergency Vets and Specialists

If you’re very lucky, you will go through the entire life of your dog without having to go to the emergency vet or see any specialists. Unfortunately, this kind of medicine exists for a reason: because we often need them, even if we really don’t want to need them.

As I said earlier, the whole goal of regular checkups at the vet is to avoid seeing the emergency vet or any kind of veterinary specialists, but sometimes life happens. The emergency vet is a kind of specialist who provides medical care to animals, just like the regular vet in terms of credentials. The big difference is that the emergency vet usually practices medicine for emergency situations or medical issues that happen outside of normal business hours. That means if there’s an accident, like your pup eats too much chocolate or gets into something they shouldn’t or accidentally breaks a bone, you bring them to the emergency vet, the same way people visit the doctor at the emergency room. Usually, the emergency vet is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, because accidents have a tendency to happen at the most inopportune moments.

Specialists will vary based on what kind of medicine they specialize in. Just like with humans, there are specialists for specific diseases. This includes, but isn’t limited to, specialists like oncologists, for cancer; surgical specialists; and even veterinary behaviorists, who specialize in behavior. Specialists will usually have additional years of education beyond vet school, and likely have completed internships or other requirements to be categorized as specialists. Your regular vet will most likely be able to direct you toward their preferred specialist in whatever category you might need.

Derek and I have had a lot of pets over the years, and one of the things we do to make sure we know what to do in an emergency situation is figure out who our local emergency vet is ahead of time. That means we have the information on hand before we’re in a panic, worried about one of the pack, and potentially stressing about all the things we need to do to manage an emergency. Before anything goes down medically, we visit the emergency practice, meet the vet there, and take a tour. We put the number to the emergency vet on the fridge and in our phones. We make sure to have the address in our phones, too, so we can just type it into the map app and go, go, go! If we go on vacation and someone else stays behind to watch the pack, we always make sure to include the emergency vet info clearly at the top of an info packet that we supply in both digital and hard copies.

While it’s important to pick a good emergency vet at a practice that feels safe and practices excellent medicine, we also make sure to have the physically closest emergency hospital number on hand, too. Sometimes our preferred emergency vet and the closest 24/7 emergency vet aren’t the same.

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