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Old April 8th, 2014, 12:29 PM
dirdie dirdie is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2014
Posts: 3
Puppy broke it's leg, 2 months later vet says it needs a $5,000 surgery.

First off i will tell you the entire story from the start, My puppy broke its 4 bones going to the toes in his front left leg at around 3 months old. Vet x-rayed reset bones and put on a cast. The first week into the cast it was a Saturday morning we noticed the cast had turned and was falling down the pups leg, we tried to stabilize the pup the best we could while trying to contact the vet to explain what happened. The vet answered the phone and denied help, (the vets office is 5 mins from my house) and suggested a emergency vet clinic that is 45 mins away. By this time the cast has fallen off the pup and the pup is crying in pain. so we drive the 45 mins trying to keep the pup stabilized and in as little pain as possible. Emergency clinic xrayed and put on a new cast.

We continued to bring the pup to our local vet throughout the rest of his broken bones and the vet kept saying its healing nice and recast roughly every 2-3 weeks. It was my understanding from research on the internet that with a puppy it should be checked and recast every week, i asked him and he said he hasn't been growing enough and the cast and everything is looking fine. throughout the entire 7 weeks they never did another xray and they never charged us for any other visits after the original one due to the complications on week 1. I thought it was odd not to xray agian but anyway.

week 7 comes, they take the cast off and xray and say everything healed up 100%, We are thinking great thast good news maybe this is all behind us now. We get him home and notice it looks a little crooked, my wife and i think its because his muscles are so weak he cannot straighten it and once he builds the muscles back up it will straighten back up. so far he seems to be running and walking fine for the most part, limps occasionally after extended activity but over time the foot is looking more and more crooked every week.

He's 7 months now and today we took him into get nurtured, it was a different vet in the office, a women who we usually get and i like much better then the man that dealt with the pups broken leg, but anyway she says she wants to do xrays on the pups leg because it isn't looking right. So they do xrays and say that a growth plate was injured and is making the leg go crooked. they talked to a surgeon and want between 3500-5k to fix the issue. My wife and i were tied up so got my mother to go to the vets and pick up the pup. She went in and asked a few questions, recorded the conversation so she would be able to get al the exact info relayed back to us. Well when i listen to the conversation the vet Sounds like she was ready for a argument and is giving all answers and attitude to my mother. Saying there was no way they could tell the growth plates were injured and the only way to tell is through trial and error, whatever that really means in this situation is beyond me. My wife is going in this afternoon with our other dog and is going to get the xrays and we are going to get a second opion from another vet.

There is no doubt something is wrong and it will be fixed, but why im here is i am not really sure what i should be doing. I feel this entire situation was handle very poorly on the vets part and i have this feeling they could of done something to prevent this or they could of caught it sooner to not be at this point. I feel the vet is liable for this situation. Am i wrong to think the vet is in the wrong here? if im not wrong should i go after the vet for the money it will cost to fix my dog. Or did they do their job the best they could? what would fellow readers do in this situation?

Sorry its so long im really stressed out about this entire thing.

Edit: Please move i put it in the wrong section.... Been a bad day.
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