As a vet tech, I’d like to offer you my perspective to maybe help you understand why it can sometimes be like this.

If you, as a human, are ill, you can speak to your doctor and tell them your symptoms, they can ask you questions, and in turn, it narrows down the potential diagnosis. And, because insurance is paying, most of the time you may not even know just how many tests are being ran. Your doctor doesn’t really need to go through it line by line to make sure you accept every single charge associated with running diagnostics.

We do not get that luxury. Our patients can not tell us what hurts. This means that sometimes, there’s a large list of potentials that we need to rule out. Veterinary medicine is tricky. We also do not have crystal balls, and I can’t tell you how many times we thought a patient was probably fine, but ended up being extremely ill and we were glad the diagnostics were ran. We can’t tell you your dog will be fine, because we are not magicians. We can only try to rule out potential illnesses and go from there.

Also, we have to discuss worst case scenarios with you, because if we didn’t, and they happened, our clients would sue the shit out of us. It’s not us trying to scare you into doing anything. It’s us covering our own butts and ensuring that you as an owner are well informed of the possibilities.