With the holidays just around the corner and the struggling economy on everyone’s mind, we are all pinching our pennies and frugally monitoring where our money is being spent.  This can easily be delineated to what we spend on our pets.  Just like in every aspect of our budget, we want the absolute best of quality and care for the least amount of money.  It may therefore be tempting to price-shop for elective procedures and surgeries, such as ovariohysterectomies and castrations, or spays and neuters, respectively.  However, the quality of care you receive may suffer, depending on where you go.

While shopping for the appropriate facility to care for your pet, there are important issues to keep in mind.  Having a professional relationship in place before any procedure is always recommended.  Would you want a surgeon that you have never met before operating on you?  The most likely time this will occur for your pet is during their visit for their exam and vaccines.  Also, this is a great opportunity to learn about expectations, possible complications, and post-operative care of any procedure, while getting all your questions answered.

One question, for example, is who will be taking care of your pet during their hospital stay?  If you are at a low-cost facility, will there be someone monitoring your pet before, during and after their surgery?  Some facilities do not provide a technician to monitor anesthesia separately…the doctor is required to both be the surgeon and anesthetist, and these are two important separate jobs that should not be multi-tasked.

Next, consider how important your particular pet is to that facility.  While some facilities may sound ideal because they are low-cost, remember that they must have a high volume of animals coming through their doors to keep those costs down, similar to McDonalds’ and their Value Menu.  There cannot be specialty sides offered, such as preanesthetic bloodwork to ensure that your pet is healthy and without a subclinical disease that would make anesthesia dangerous, or anesthetic drugs that are tailored for your particular pet’s needs.  Most lost-cost clinics use the same drug cocktail for all their procedures, no matter the age or physical needs of the animal.  Another caveat to understand is instead of using an autoclave which uses pressurized steam to separately sterilize surgical equipment for each individual pet, some low-cost shelters store their surgical equipment in cold packs (chemical solutions), which is no doubt much cheaper from an operations stand-point, but can be less than ideal when cleaning instruments of blood contamination and microorganisms.

Post-operative care is just as critical.  Because each patient is different, it is important to monitor and manage their pain accordingly, which cannot be offered at a low-cost facility.  That particular clinic may only have one source of injectable pain medication, and little or no choice of oral pain medications for you to take home after the procedure.   And while none of us want it to occur, if there is a post-operative complication, is the surgeon available to care for your pet?  If you were able to create a relationship with a general practitioner before the procedure, then they are likely to answer your phone calls readily and recheck your pet at no additional cost.  If you did it with a spay/neuter clinic, you may be scrambling to find someone to help your pet in a potentially emergent situation, and spend significantly more money than if you had simply paid for a higher quality of care at the front end.

It’s always important to spend your money wisely, but it is just as important to realize that you get what you pay for. For veterinary services, you are paying for quality of care and service, both of which your pet, and you, deserve.