Health care plans for pets? I wish!

I think i may need to write a letter to our new president. I'd like to ask him to incorporate one more thing into his new Healthcare reform...it wouldn't take much, just a little extra wording, a little extra money, and a whole lot of drama between two political parties. Whats the the extra you ask....how bout a little health care coverage for our pets....ya know they get old too!

All jokeing aside, i got a little dose of how expensive the vet can be this last Sunday (ya, sunday, when only emergency pet clinics are open). What happened you ask.................

Well, here is the story...

Saturday night before i went to bed i loocked up the house and shooooed the two dogs off to their kenel for the night. They both looked like there normal selves and off they went. The next morning, we woke and took our time getting up in the morning, and finally about 8 a.m. i deemed it time to feed the dogs. I opened the door to find my old trusty (crusty) Dingo sitting there waiting paitently for his morning vitals, giving me the evil eye! Something drasticly wrong with him..........The picture says it all, look at his left eye!

I was shocked to say the least, over night his eye had completley clouded over! No ryme or reason, it just did! I felt sick to my stomach, and instantly thought my poor old dingo was going blind, and raceing thoughts of his doom were flashing before MY own eyes!
With steady hands Nicole thumbed through the phone book to find "urgent pet care" and a quick call was made. By 9 a.m. Monty was being seen!
The vet himmed and haaaaad over what was going on, and told me she wanted to do some blood work, and it could be this or that or some more of this and a little more of that.....By this time i'd come back to reality and my pocket book was starting to talk to me! With me being mostly laid off, every nickle counts around our house right now....and vet bills ARE NOT part of the monthly budget! So the vet talked me into the blood draw and a few tests and then she told me what she thought it was......Basicly Monty is to FAT! Something to do with Lipid cells carrying extra fat in his blood stream and somehow that can cause the eye to cloud over and if not treated fairly quickly can cause damage to the eye (although she did say it would take awhile to make him go blind). Her final soultioun were some pregnazone eye drops (a steroid) and it would clear up fairly quickly, and a follow up with my regular vet on Tuesday for the blood work out come, and a final diagnosis.
The vet then disappered for awhile and came back with eye drops and my bill. As i read the bill i came down to the total......$275! I think me turning white as a sheet was signal enough, as the Vet quickly left the room leaving me only one option of leaving and paying!

So, pay i did......after i got home and started the doses on Monty, his eye started to clear within 1/2 a day, and today it's back to normal. As for me i've stared at the cost of the bill about 10 different times......here's the breakdown.....$100 entry fee......$130 for the blood draw & labs.....$16 for the eye drops....and the rest is taxes and misc. charges.


So Mr. Obama.....how bout a pet care plan?........after that i need to talk to ya about my unemployment benifits...but that's a whole nother post alltogether!


Signing off from the North........Where pets get sick.....vets cost a lot.....and i'm broke now too........which is NOT nice!


Mark.....The Iron Skillet