Lee Pitts: If Vets Were MDs

I think we take our large animal veterinarians for granted. Just think of how much worse it could be if veterinarians were more like medical doctors. Let’s say a bow hunter accidentally shot your cow in the rump. OUCH! Instead of getting almost immediate attention from your vet, you’d phone a number and be placed on hold listening to ear-splitting music for 20 minutes to schedule an appointment, because vets would no longer make house calls.

“We hear you have a problem with a horse,” says the receptionist on the phone days later.

“No, it’s a cow and some idiot shot an arrow into her rump,” I reply.

“That must hurt. But sorry, the doc is not taking any new patients at this time.”

“We’re not new. He’s been our vet for 25 years.”

“Oh, in that case the soonest we can squeeze you in is in four weeks.”

“You’re kidding? My cow is supposed to walk around with an arrow in her butt for a month?”

“Yes, the DVM is extremely busy because he’s now playing golf twice a week.”

Then the day before your scheduled appointment you get this phone message: “We’re very excited to announce that the doc has been invited to play in a pro-am golf tournament tomorrow. Please call our office to reschedule your appointment.”

Finally, six weeks after your cow was shot you load her up and arrive 15 minutes early to fill out the 24 page questionnaire the receptionist hands you. It asks things like, “Has your cow ever had an “STD”. You’re embarrassed to ask, so you whisper to the receptionist, “What is an STD?”

“In her loudest possible voice she practically screams, “sexually transmitted disease.”

This causes everyone in the waiting room to regard you in a new light. You pervert! Another question asks, “Besides you and your spouse, who should we contact in case of an emergency?”

You write down your sister-in-law’s name who’s a kindergarten teacher, although you doubt that she’s going to be much help in removing the arrow from the rump of your cow.

You wait in the waiting room reading four year old cow magazines and watching The View on TV. Your name is finally called and so you unload your cow to be looked at by a veterinarians’s assistant (VA) who takes the cow’s blood pressure, temperature, weighs her and offers a preliminary prognosis. “Your cow appears to have an arrow in her rump.” Then she asks all sorts of questions, including, “Does your cow have insurance?”

“She does but I don’t.”

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The Vets have escaped Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare & the AMA...and look how much better our animals are treated than us.