There has just been a bit about it on the lunchtime news as well. They showed a highly distressed dog which was obviously in some kind of pain as well. It seems to be a teaching establishment of some kind, or at least a place where they take on trainees, and this 'student vet assistant', AKA the under cover reporter, couldn't put a catheter in the dog's leg to administer a pre-med. Then she made a huge thing of being asked to do it because she was unqualified. She also claimed another member of staff had hit the dog but the clip didn't show that happen, well not as far as I could see. It was probably her bad luck that her first catheterisation happened to be on a large and angry dog but I suspect it was a case of 'in at the deep end' to test her character and see if she really was prepared to stick it out. (Lots of wannabes fancy a bash at working in a vet but when the reality bites they run for the hills. I have always felt I couldn't/can't face it because I see too much of the pain, grief and ignorance of some owners I see during my CP work. ) It looked like the supervision she had wasn't ideal but then again we do not know what else was going in that day... perhaps all the qualified people were in another room fighting to save an animals life?
It is very clear, though, that they are using this footage of this poor dog's state to alarm and sensationalize. I've had to carry out minor things such as cleaning wound sites or applying medication to cats and kittens and when they are distressed the sound of crying and struggling will break your heart. That doesn't mean I'm being careless or heartless while doing it.... but to the outsider it looks and sounds like torture. With a large dog brute force with the restraint sometimes has to be applied I would imagine and sometimes it's going to go badly as was the case in the footage it seems.
They also showed clear evidence of bill hoiking and covering up an in-house whoopsie which resulted in a minor injury to a dog's pad. There was some evidence of other minor botches and perhaps one or two staff being a bit iffy in their practices and approach.... but no worse than our general complaints about Vets Now re pricing and I've seen similar complaints about attitudes and handling on this forum. Every good practice gets lumbered with a dodgy nurse or vet on occasion.... they tend not to last long once the truth is known!
Still open minded here and will watch the full programme with interest. But so far I'm not convinced this practice deserves a Panarama style lynching. Vets Now is a far better target for them!
That link, Claire, written by this 'under cover' girl, read like she's seriously gunning for the Pulitzer! Far too flowery for a basic piece of journalism for my nature... makes me suspect whether she has ponced up her evidence as well as her text.
