As groomers we all have dealt with being thrown under bus by a Veterinarian that can't come up with any better diagnosis than to 'blame the groomer.'
The groomer did this or the groomer did that.
I guess in hindsight our shop has been pretty lucky, and have not been blamed by Vets very much over the years.
I did send a customer to their Vet once after I found something that I thought needed to be checked, only to have the Vet tell the owner that it must have been something the groomer did during the grooming.
Thankfully the 'something' that I found on the dog, I found at check-in while the owner was still there, before I groomed the dog.
The owner actually called me to tell me that the Vet tried to blame me.
I can't for the life of me remember what the Vet ended up saying had caused the issue with the dog.
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago my daughter took her Bichon into our Vet because he was favoring one of his eyes, and the whites of his eye was very red and irritated.
Our Vet was on vacation so she saw the stand in Vet.
He diagnosis it as a form of pink eye and gave my daughter medicine for the eye for 5 days.
Five days go by and her Bichon is still favoring the eye, so she called to ask if she should continue the medicine for a few more days.
The answer was yes.
Fast forward about a week and a half and the eye is a little better but still a little red and irritated looking, so my daughter takes her Bichon in for our regular Vet to check the eye and see if he had a different diagnosis.
So, did he agree with the pink eye diagnosis or have a new one?
Oh, he had a new diagnosis alright!
A couple as a matter of fact.
The first one; my daughter was probably not keeping the hair out of her dogs eyes and it was causing them to become irritated.
This is Cooper.
This is the way he looks all of the time.
My daughter never lets his hair grow into his eyes.
She trims around his eyes every one to two weeks.
This dog never has hair in his eyes!
My daughter made sure that the Vet knew that 'hair in the eyes' could not possibly be the problem.
Sooo, without blinking an eye, the Vet came up with a new diagnosis.
My daughter was bathing her dog too much and the shampoo she was using was irritating the eyes.
(Now remember, only one eye was having a problem)
Really!?!?
We are now blaming the groomer right to their face??
My daughter once again set him straight.
She told him that she had been bathing her dogs every week for their entire lives with no problems and had never gotten any shampoo in any of their eyes.
Plus the fact that her Bichon had not started favoring his eye till four days after the bath.
Nothing more was said.
My daughter was given a different medicine and left, but she was fuming.
She was sure that our Vet did not believe her about not getting any shampoo in the eyes.
Our Vet had blamed the groomer, and she was the groomer of her own dog!
My question is....if a Vet does not know why something is going on with a dog why can't they just say; "I am sorry, I am not sure why the eye is irritated but lets try this medicine and see if we can clear it up."
Is it that hard to admit that part of Veterinary medicine is a guessing game?
Believe me, over the years I could have thrown several Vets under the bus for things that they had done wrong with some of my customers dogs.
I am proud to say that I try to be professional and not bad mouth a customers Vet if I don't agree with how they are advising my customer.
Instead I will just suggest that they get a second opinion to see if a second Vet agrees.
Do Vets take a course on how to blame the groomer in Veterinary School?
I wonder....
Sorry, rant over.
Ha ha. You are so right. I have had vets blame me. I live in a very small town so try really hard to never speak against others . . . it will get around, and it's never a good look anyway. It does get really hard though when there is a clearly bad practice happening. I have seen a belly button hernia that hadn't stopped weeping after 6 months, even after the dog had gone back to have it redone. I do find it very hard to hold to a professional line when the dog might suffer for it. Oh look. You got me ranting :-P
ReplyDeleteI get your point completely and I feel like if the vet first jumps onto the "must be hair in his eyes" comment when clearly that dog never has a problem its easy to disregard everything they say afterward. However I feel as though this is being read too much into. I am sure there are people out there groomers and owners who can get shampoo into a dogs eye and irritate it or careless owners who LOVE THE VISOR AND IF YOU TRIM IT SHORT BY GOD YOU HAVE MADE THEIR DOG INTO A POODLE so that could be a real reason for other dogs. Again as you've said in previous posts CUSTOMER SERVICE is extremely important so I am sure the vets tone can set you off as well. But I don't think it is completely farfetched to bring up shampoo in the eye or hair in the eye as a possibility so I feel like it's a little unfair to completely knock a vet for making a suggestion such as that.
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