Corporate vets are bitter pill to swallow

IN the good old days there was usually the same collection of key figures in every rural community: the vicar, the pub landlord, the doctor and the vet.

The last one of these generally had a well-developed relationship with his farming clients and an approach to dealing with them which took account of the financial ups and downs of the job – and accordingly the fact that he might, occasionally, have to wait a little time to have his bill settled.

How things have changed; how attitudes have hardened now that so many local veterinary practices have been bought up by corporate interests.

The friendly farmer/vet relationship is almost a thing of the past now. The sole purpose of the veterinary practice appears to be not so much curing sick animals but extracting the maximum amount in fees from their owners.

With payment on the spot, please. We have had personal experience of this with our working dog, which suddenly developed an allergy to pollen which left him scratching furiously all day (and probably most of the night).

So Mrs H put him into the car and took him round to what had been the local, independent vet’s practice but which is now in corporate ownership.

Her first surprise came when she was informed it would be £40 for a consultation – and asked if she could pay it.

That seemed a bit steep but the dog was suffering, so in she went with him. The vet took a look and agreed with the diagnosis we had made and recommended putting him on a short course of steroids – though only for a limited time because of their side-effects. After that he would be switched to another type of tablet.

So the dog duly took the steroids and taken back for another (£40, of course) consultation. This time the vet recommended non-steroid tablets which, he agreed, were rather expensive: £2.83 each. And he would prescribe a week’s supply initially.

This was beginning to get expensive but since Mrs H and I are longstanding internet users she immediately started hunting around and found exactly the same tablets on offer – and at a lower price.

But to obtain them we needed the vet’s prescription – which we were legally entitled to be given.

However, when Mrs H returned to the vet’s to ask for it she was told supplying it to us would cost £22.50. And when she asked for a further week’s supply of the tablets – because we had not been able to order any online without the prescription – she was told they were now £3.23 each, apparently because we were only asking for a small quantity.

So Mrs H handed over more than twenty quid for a week’s treatment and retreated fuming, to her keyboard where with a few brisk strokes she turned up a site offering exactly the same tablets at £30 for a month’s course.

I’m thinking of buying a few extra boxes and going back to the vet’s to ask if they want to buy any because then I might have a chance of getting some of my money back.

How things have changed: how attitudes have hardened now that so many local veterinary practices have been bought up by corporate interests