reality check has arrived...we are not going to survive on wishes and prayers any longer. starting next week, i start making drastic cutbacks. if i absolutely have to crack the GIC...i crack the GIC,..we are lucky to have it to crack...but first i will try some other things.
once the US dogs arrive...i will close down admissions for awhile. that will eventually help with the workload esp. with our recent increase in adoptions.
i would prefer to just worry about the animals themselves, end of story. but unfortunately there is money stuff and people stuff that i have to deal with too.
anyway, we have enough food for everyone for a few weeks...everyone is pretty much up to date on medical care so except for emergencies and med refills and special diets, we should be able to hold the vet bills where they are.
i don't know why god doesn't just let me win the lottery. he knows damn well i will put it to very good use.... (it might be because i rarely remember to actually buy a ticket.)
what is not really helpful was him allowing BC Hydro and Terasen Gas to send me almost $2000 in utilities bills this month...low blow and that hurts....thx so much ...not.
i would like to point out that i did not invent cold winter weather...nor did i decide to turn off the sunlight in the late afternoon...those were pretty stupid and costly heavenly decisions from my point of view.
ahh well...i am going to sulk in bed with my beloved bed crew, minus my best friend cuddles who would try to cheer me up....except i did the noble thing and sent him to kathy's house!
it is both the increase in the numbers and the acute nature of their illness in a slightly younger senior population.....so unaltered 18 yr old tom or sweet pea due to increased surgical risk are treated palliatively without further investigation for their reproductive cancers...while dogs like star, who is 6-8 is assessed for lung mets, cleared, undergoes surgery in the hopes that we got it all in time, only to find out that we didn't and it had spread sideways instead of into the lungs where we expected it to...and so she is $2000 later, palliative too.
i had this exact conversation today which is weird...but to a certain degree their age really does impact how far we look and how far we go.
when dexter came in...as soon as i saw him, i thought...dead dog walking...and soon too. so for dex...we never even thought about checking him out further diagnostically and looking at the possibility of removing that tumour...had i known that 18 months later he would still be going strong and the only reason we had to euthanize was because fly season was coming...i would have had that tumour surgically removed...and maybe he would still be here.
then there are dogs like phil and saul...who come in as healthy, in good physical shape, reasonably aged seniors...they should have been around for along time...we do their surgical tune ups and neuter and 4-6 weeks later both are dead...one from an unknown bone cancer and one from a freak stomach torsion..who could predict?
2 yrs ago...we had 18 dogs...most of them long termers (which meant less new ones coming in) whose vet tune ups had already been done...last year and this year we have an ever changing turn over of about 50 old animals dying and 50 new old animals coming in...the dying already had the money spent on them to maintain or improve their quality of life. and the new guys coming in....need that vet care to catch up for all of the years that their health was neglected. double whammy.
AND just like what is happening in our human hospitals and home care...the acuity of the dogs coming in is just that much greater...5 yrs ago, dusty never would have made it out of the pound alive...this year she did.
so part of it too is a shift in the attitude of the shelters who send us animals...they are trying to save even the really sick ones so they contact us and we want to save them too.
sicker animals cost more than they used to....so i think it is a multi-level impact that is causing such a steep incline in vet bills.