I spend a lot of money at my vet.

She is an exotics-only vet at an exotics-only clinic.

She's more expensive my old "cat and dog" vet who pretended to know
about ferrets. But she does a lot better job too. In two months she has
taught me more and done more good for my ferrets than my old vet did in
two years.

Her clinic is small. It's just her and one other vet. Their clinic has
only been open for about a year. They have an x-ray machine and all
that good stuff. There are two vets who have to make a living, plus
some vet techs they have to have money to pay. But the charges aren't
as bad as they could be. An x-ray is $60, the same as at the old
dog/cat vet and the emergency vet. Lupron is $55, plus office fee ($60)
or tech fee ($20). None of it is outrageous. They didn't charge us for
the two times we've had a ferret stay overnight for observation. They
didn't charge us for the time we took a ferret in just to have his
splint glanced at by the vet to make sure it was holding up. Or for
like three of the times they had to put a new splint on because his
splint fell off or slid down or made his leg swell up (hey, no one sees
ferrets with broken legs, so there was a little experimenting involved
to find what worked). They aren't in any way trying to gouge us.
They're trying to charge us as little as possible, while still making
their clinic profitable.

My old dog/cat vet used to give us free x-rays, ultrasounds, etc.
They're a bigger, more established clinic, and can afford to be real
casual about what they do and don't charge. But when we took our two
older ferrets in for bloodwork there in December, they didn't see fit
to tell me that my old girl's blood glucose read 60. When we took her
in to the new vet this past Tuesday, her blood glucose was 78 and she
had a seizure. Well, maybe she wouldn't have had a seizure at all if
we'd sucked it up before and gone to the good vet to begin with, even
though she is more expensive. We still think we caught it early, and
we're thankful for that, but still....

Good exotics care will cost you in most areas. Sometimes you get one
who is good but still cheap (there are also many vets who give mega
discounts to households with many ferrets). But most of the time you
get what you pay for. If your vet care is ultra super cheap, your
ferrets may be the ones who are getting screwed....

[Posted in FML 5550]