Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Rosie

For the most part, I like my job. Most days, work at the veterinary hospital isn't work, but some days shit happens.

Most days we get everyone well and send them home. we have the occasional euthanasia, sad.

Then we have days like today. We have a client with an older rottwieler. Yesterday Dr. Cook prescribed some arthritis medicine. They called this morning to tell us Rosie died in the night. Rosie had been, as far as we knew healthy, other than normal symptoms for a dog of her breed and age.

Doc wasn't in yet and I'm the one who answered the phone. I made our apologies about Rosie, she was sweetheart. Her owners, who moved here from a large urban area, then asked me if we would cremate her for them. We don't have the facilities, so I gave them referral to a Veterinary hospital 40 miles away. SOP! Then she asked me what other people do. I told her if folks live on the farm or have friends who do , they bury their pets their. Then she wants to know what our hospital does. So I told her, we take them to the landfill. Not fun, but life isn't always fun.

Anyway, this is where this story starts to get tricky. There is another veterinary hospital in town, that does animal cremation. However, he was asked by the city to stop. You see, he does cremation out back in a 55 gallon metal barrel. Throws your pet in, covers it in diesel fuel and lights it on fire and stirs it with a shovel. He is not in the city limits so they have no jurisdiction and the county really doesn't care.

I have no clue where he comes up with the ashes you get back?!

To get on with it, one of the owners shows up later at our veterinary hospital very upset. I didn't tell her about the local crematory, I told her to take her dog to the landfill, I didn't offer for us to come and help her load her 80 pound dog and she hurt her back, after all her and her girlfriend/significant other both have bad backs and are new in town, (after 2 years), and Holly doesn't have a job and they need all the help they can get, and I'm an unsympathetic slob!

I am very sorry about Rosie, I've lost dogs and I understand how they feel, but they didn't ask for us to come and help load the dog, we don't refer cremation to the other vet because of his method, and we were told by the code officer, that he'd been asked to stop, and as far as the landfill, she asked me what we did, not what to do.

All the while we have another client standing there, the vet tech and the Doc, knew about Rosie, I told them, and I told them that I had referred to Animal Trails for the cremation. We were all dumb founded when she walked in.

Unfortunately, we will have these days now and then. I guess you have to forgive the pet owner. They are hurting and I understand. I just wish there was someone there for us to help us out, so we could better help the pet owner and us. We try very hard, and these deals are hard for us too.

1 comment:

MrsEvilGenius said...

Unfortunately front line workers will always get shite from customers. I worked in telephone customer service for years and got screamed at, threatened, etc, regularly.

I say chalk this up to grief and be as chilly as is polite to customer in question from now on (unless/until she apologises).