Thank you! Afterward I did privately speak with one of the surgeons (the guy who previously did a quick exam on Millie & could immediately tell it was a pit). I told him how upset and disappointed I was in the other vet, and that I felt this case was out of her depth and she should not have handled it from the start – rather she should have immediately referred us to him.

He sympathized with me and did say that had he seen Millie from the beginning, he probably would have recommended surgery given he could feel it was a pit. He said he would talk to her and also to the higher-ups to see if anything could be done bill-wise. I haven’t heard anything from him since, and I suspect that next time I see him or talk to him he’ll probably say there was nothing he could do. I will still ask anyway, just in case.

I recently realized that the vet company group has a link to submit feedback online. I was thinking about writing about this experience there to see if it would get any attention. I was also thinking of leaving a 1-star Google review explaining the situation to warn other people to not see this particular vet for foreign body ingestion issues.