Carrot's vet trip

[DanaC]

Today was Carrot's first trip to the PDSA clinic (Peoples' Dispensary for Sick Animals).

I've been noticing some stiffness in his back end the last few months, and haven't been able to afford a trip to his usual vet. So, with some reluctance, I registered him with the PDSA - they're a charity run organisation who provide almost free vet care for people who can't afford it otherwise - in order to register your pet with them you have to be in receipt of some form of government assistance - in my case housing benefit, which is a monthly payment towards my rent costs. When you register, you do so for 6 months, at the end of those 6 months if you are still in receipt of assistance then you can register for a further 6 months and so on.

They're a fair old drive away (45 mins) but it's a nice enough place. Much nicer than my last experience of a PDSA clinic about 20 years ago, which had kind of coloured my opinion somewhat.

They do preventative treatments like flea meds, worming and vaccination at cost, and they treat your animal for sickness or injury for free - they just ask you to make a donation of whatever you can afford to go towards the cost of treatment.

So - Carrot now has his pain meds. I'm so relieved. I think he's probably been in constant low level pain for a few months now, and sometimes more than low level.

The vet we saw was great. Carrot certainly liked her - even though she was mauling about with his legs which he considered wholly unnecessary. She agrees that he is more than likely in pain a lot of the time, and the stiffness is quite pronounced when he walks (not when he trots, when his movement is quite fluid) and he was very reluctant to bend his legs when she was testing them. She says it seems fairly typical of a dog with mild hip dysplasia, and that it may well be that he's started with arthritis around the hip joints. This fits very much with both his regular vet's prediction that he would likely start with arthritis very young, and also that of the specialist he went to see when he was going through his hydro and physio therapy after initial diagnosis.

The vet thinks it is likely he will now be on pain meds for life, but is hopeful that his condition should be manageable with fairly low level drugs and care around exercise. He needs a couple of weeks of short walks and no running around with other dogs and then we can start letting him have some longer walks and a bit of running around - but we need to be careful not to let him over do it: a bit of a run around is ok, and a long country walk is ok, but not both together and paying close attention to whether he seems to be tiring. It's going to be a case of monitoring how he does and seeing how the different kinds of exercise affect him.

So - we have come back with an 8 week supply of pain meds (the same that he was on when he was first diagnosed back when he was a youngster) and I've to take him back in 8 weeks to see how he's getting on and get a refill.

I donated £10. Had I gone to my normal vet I'd have walked out with bill of between £60 and £80 depending on whether they insisted on doing kidney and liver tests before prescribing, and probably only a two week supply of pain meds.

God bless you PDSA. When I am in a better place financially, and back with my regular vets, I think I'll set up a regular monthly donation. Just a small one, but every bit helps.