The. Saga.

Woah! It's July already! Where does the time go?!

We have not had the best of months, Nemo really hasn't had a good month. What started off as a reoccurring eye issue, turned into the biggest and most expensive drama/ load of frakin bullshit ever. It taught us one big lesson about insurance tho, when you adopt a doggy.. don't blindly take over and never check on the insurance because the insurance we had was total rubbish. Because of his age, our yearly claim amount went down to pittance. Not only do we have to pay the 'self risk' which is completely normal and I get it, but then also a further 20% of the rest of the costs. Umm, what?! Bloody stupid, so basically when a doggy really needs insurance, coz older doggies get issues more, you don't get the help you thought you would. We pay more to insure him than we do me! Luckily there is another insurance company we can go with and are going to look into putting him on that, it is more expensive than our current bullshit one that is about to expire. It will give us better coverage and that is really important considering it seems that 4 out of 5 vets we have seen over the last month have been frakin useless. Yes, that is right we have had to see 5 vets.

It started out with Nemo having a snotty nose and his eye issue, which our local vet had told us that if it flares up again we would need to take him to a specialist, so we looked around and got suggested this one that was an hours drive away.. not easy to get to but thankfully the parentals were good enough to take us there. We arrive, get told that its from an infected tooth and it will need to be extracted. We don't argue so they are a specialist and they would know best. Even tho they did not even look in his eyes or test them. We had to book him in for the operation and we did. Needless to say, teeth issues are not covered by our bullshit insurance, however once we got the bill we discover that insurance has been used and ALL of our yearly claim amount. but on what exactly? Stuff I am not convinced that they needed to do nor had a right to charge for, but I'm in a country where you just shut up and take it quietly, and then bitch about it later to people or on blogs... this is my outlet.

They charged us for a re-visit, and to have Nemo there for the entire day. They didn't even feed him afterwards and by the time we got home he was starving and crying for food. It was torture. Not to mention that they didn't even call us to tell us we could pick him up. It got to about an hour before they were closing and considering it takes us an hour to drive there, Em rung to see what was happening and they were all like, "yeah he's done, you can come and get him." WTF asses. They explained how they removed A tooth and if the problem came back then just fill the script for more antibiotics to clear it up. Which they charged us again for, which brings me to them screwing up the first script they gave us, which we had to pay for. If I could, I would go back to that place and kick every last one of them in the frakin shins. Once we got home, we quickly discovered that they had taken more than ONE tooth, but the entire top front row bar one little tooth. Ummm, excuse me.. why the frak were we not told about this?! Seriously, where are your communication skills for worried animal owners? Unbelievable. 

The only good thing that happened at that place was I got to see a beautiful bulldog. I want one. My next dog will be at least a frenchie. At least.

And sure enough, the eye issue came back and by this time we had found out that we didn't even get to see the specialist like we had asked for. I was livid. We took Nemo to the local animal hospital, as I refused to drive back to that bullshit place just to be dicked around and over-charged again. Turns out, the animal hospital was no better, we left with 5 scripts for meds for the little fella and told to come back the following week, which we did and got charged a hellish amount for. I expect to pay something for a check-up but not basically the price of a whole new visit. We also got a different vet this time.. and was told to come back at the end of the week for another check. Which.. we did and once again got charged a hellish amount for, along with another script, which we had to pay extra for again. Not to mention we got the most softest speaking, confidence lacking vet in the joint. In my opinion, if you are going to be a vet you need to be able to calm the owners and the animals. We got told then, that we would need to go and see a specialist so to call the clinic on Monday to get the referral for some specific place, which Em then asked if we could take him elsewhere and she was like no, we recommend this place. So we waited out the weekend and then Em had the joyus task of making call after call, back and forth to the different clinics, as the recommended place didn't have an eye specialist for the week, as it is vacation time. We got in with a specialist who wasn't recommended but Em had asked the confidence lacking vet on Friday if we could go to when she said no. Gah! We managed to get an appointment on the day, Em left early from work, her dad drove us. I personally think he likes going coz he gets to sit in the waiting room, chatting to all the animal owners and patting all the animals that come past, but hey, whatever floats your boat! This vet was in a stunning area, there were even picnic tables, which amused me a little and it was packed! I guess that is a good sign? It was right by a lake so Nemo cried his ass off like he was being tortured.. coz he wanted to go in the water! That's my boy! Anyways, we arrive, we wait, we go in, we get an eye specialist who is actually a specialist and who actually checks his eye properly and tells us, there is nothing to worry about, given his age and breed it is probably that he is not producing enough tears. Really?! That is it?! 4 other vets couldn't work that shit out?! Did they get their doggy doc licenses from a weet-bix box?! We head off, are told to stop all the other mass meds for Nemo and use the drops he will prescribe and then we pay. Now this is part of the kicker, it cost us less for this NEW visit with a specialist and getting a script, than it did for the re-check up without a script. The biggest kicker tho, he is the one we should have seen at the very first place we went to. A month of stress and worrying and being over-charged could have been avoided, had we just got to see him to start with, like we had originally asked for. 

I am still in a little shock that they charge you for scripts when you are there for a consult. I get being charged for them when you just call and get a new one coz you are on-going meds, like what we have to do for Nemo's oldman pills.. but charging for a script when you are already there getting things checked and re-checked.. that is just greed. Also, charging for a new one when you screwed one up is the height of greediness. I think in the future, we will just stick to going out to that last vet, it is a bit of a windy drive but I think it is well worth it to get a little service and competence.

Nemo is pretty un-fazed by it all, I even got to have a chuckle at him last night when I was giving him kisses and he hates it when I kiss him, so he did what he would usually do and show his teeth, but.. his teeth are gone! and all I could go was laugh! so now to show how tough he is, he shows me his gummy tops and single tooth sticking out! It's hilarious and adorable all in one clean swoooop! He still has his bottom teeth and big teeth, but when he moved his lip up to show that one top tooth, all you can do is chuckle! I mean look at it! [instagram photo] Gosh, he's handsome!

I am hoping July is going to be a much better month than June. It should be, we have summer vacation coming up in a couple of weeks, we don't have any plans to go away, just to bum around and relax for the most part of 4 weeks off. Em really needs it, so in a way it was really good that we got a trip in to New York and Boston in May. We both have summer cards, which means we can go anywhere in Skane (I think) for free! (or well, the cost of the cards which was less than $100 for 2 months travel!) BillyGoat and Hank are heading over, so we should get a little time with them also. Hopefully there will be some nicer more riveting blogs coming up over the summer too.  Emotionally it has been a tough year so far, which makes it hard to blog about fun stuffs. Fingers crossed, the second half of the year is much better!