[Schneed10]

Dude I feel you on this.

I've got a Miniature Schnauzer. She's 11 years old now. Great personality, playful when you want to play, cuddly when the wife wants to cuddle, mild-mannered with the kids, perfect dog. We love her, my wife is especially attached.

A few years ago she was peeing in the house frequently. We'd walk her and let her out all the time. But she'd stop to pee every 10 steps. Eventually she would strain to pee, and then eventually blood showed up in the urine.

She was clearly in pain so we took her to the vet. They did x-rays (which I was fine with) and they found bladder stones. They recommended surgery to remove the stones and a special diet to prevent them from forming again. The surgery was $600. It was costly, but I was even fine with that, because I can't let my dog deal with that much pain, ya know?

But then as the vet is listening to her heart, she says I hear a bit of a heart murmur. I think we should do an echocardiogram just to be sure the heart can handle the anestesia from the bladder surgery. So they got me all worried about her heart giving out, so we're like OK do the echo. Another $250.

Now everytime we take her in to get immunizations, her teeth cleaned, whatever, they ALWAYS say that we should do another echo to see if the murmur gets worse.

WHY? Are we going to do open heart surgery on my effing dog??? Even if her murmur is bad, we're not paying for a $4000 heart surgery. So I drew the line, I told them no more Echos, the murmur is what it is.

I think it's part of their business model. Tug at your heartstrings to get you to open your wallet.