Kwento Ni Nanay

Creepy Vet

About a year ago, one of my dogs completely tore his cranial cruciate ligament in his knee. He was sprinting laps in our backyard when he suddenly halted and held up his hind leg. He wouldn't bear any weight on that leg, so I immediately called my vet. I have worked with dogs for a long time, and I feared it was a ligament tear.

We'd been going to the same vet for about two years, and I was happy with them. I'm very protective over my dogs, and the vet we'd seen had always put me at ease. He had given them their annual shots as well as an emergency surgery for one of my younger dogs.

As I pulled into the parking lot with my injured dog, I was anxious about my dog's leg and the upcoming cost for his care; however, I was not worried about trusting him with the staff. As I mentioned above, we'd been coming to this place for about two years, and I felt comfortable with the entire staff. I helped my dog limp onto the scale as the tech recorded his weight before we went into one of the examination rooms to wait for the vet.

I was a little surprised when a vet I'd never met opened the door, but I figured they'd hired somebody new. He looked at me as if he was surprised to see me too. Then he smiled. A long, drawn-out silence followed. "He won't put any weight on his leg," I said as I rubbed my dog's neck and attempted to direct the vet's attention where it should be--on my dog. He took a glance at my dog and quickly said it was a ligament tear (like I had guessed), but he wanted to do x-rays. I agreed. Instead of waiting in the room, like I've always done in the past, he told me to come with him into the back. I knew my dog would be much more comfortable with me staying with him, so in that moment, I was actually happy (though very surprised) to follow him down the hall and through the door that led to the area clients do not enter.

Once I was in the back, he started throwing scattered and fragmented information at me. He sedated my dog and held him on his side for an x-ray. I sat on the cold floor by a surgery table and tried to keep my dog warm as the vet started to tell me about a new procedure he wanted to try. He said he had practiced on horses with high success. He wasn't licensed to perform it yet, but he wanted to fly out a friend--a fellow veterinarian--from Ohio. He gave me his friend's name, and he said his friend was an expert in performing the newest surgeries for ligament tears in dogs. In that moment, I was very anxious and upset over my dog's injury, so I just listened and nodded. The whole time he was chatting, I still didn't have a clear idea of what the surgery included and how they would repair his knee. I sat on the cold floor while the vet spun around in his chair and nudged my shoe with his foot.

A tech brought back another client's dog (without the owner) and took a fecal test. More dogs followed, and not one other owner was taken into the back room. Besides the one vet and the single tech who came in and out, I was the only person back there. The vet confirmed that he had my correct cell phone number, and he texted me the x-ray images. He told me he'd call his friend in Ohio that night and call me back to set up the surgery. Another silence lingered, and I realized almost two hours had gone by. I still had vague information about this surgery or this mysterious friend from Ohio. I asked if my dog needed anything else, and I said I needed to go.

As soon as I paid--a big bill too--and left the building, I started to feel very uneasy. A mysterious vet I'd never met was flying from Ohio just to do this surgery? They wanted to try a new method? Was my dog supposed to be a guinea pig in all this? I still wasn't sure just exactly what they wanted to do--all I'd been told was it was a new method and it was having very high reviews. I started to think about how I'd been taken into the back with the vet and how unprofessional it all seemed.

I started to really worry about my dog, and I no longer felt confident following through with the mysterious surgery. They'd given me pain pills for my dog, so I gave him one when I got home. Creepy Vet never called me back that night.