Have you ever wondered if your Veteranarian was overcharging you and over treating your pet? At Aldie Vet/Dulles South, you can know.

We brought our 11 month old puppy in after an evening of vomiting, suspecting she might have found an ibuprofen or two on the floor. Diagnostics came to nearly 1,200 thanks to two unnecessary (and expensive!) xrays. Dr. Barnes told us that the puppy's blood tests came back elevated and she suspected we were correct about the ibuprofen ingestion. Per their estimate, diagnostics and treatment would run us 4000.

When we expressed that we couldn't afford that, she said we could get a credit card or we could EUTHANIZE THE PUPPY. No lesser treatment plans or alternatives were discussed with us. It was pay for the treatment plan as laid out, or the dog dies. Because the cost was so far outside our budget, we almost euthanized our puppy, but in the end we couldn't and chose to go into debt.

The puppy ended up being there for slightly less than 48 hours. When we went to pick her up, the vet tech said HER KIDNEY VALUES WERE NEVER ABNORMAL so maybe she didn't eat the ibuprofen after all. Huh? How is that possible when we were led to believe she could die any time? We almost euthanized her and she was never that sick!

Even though she was there a full day less than estimated, our total was more than the estimate. I imagine this is because they saw the estimate as a "blank check" from us, so when Poison Control told them she would need less care, they made up the difference with expensive, unnecessary treatments.

Most infuriatingly, they give her a feeding tube to administer medication that came in pill form. This involved sedating her, putting in the tube, and taking xrays. They had to do it twice because it was so irritating to the puppy that she ripped it out. This raised our cost 800 and literally the only reason for it was because no one in the whole facility could get her to swallow a pill. They sent us home with the remainder of the pills and I was able to get her to swallow them 21 times with no trouble at all.

They also gave her expensive, redundant medicines that were not recommended by poison control, and sedated her every single time they had to interact with her for anything even though all their notes say she wasn't aggressive.

All told there were over 1000$ in completely unnecessary charges on our bill which doesn't even include all the time she spent there being "treated" after she was already well.

All of this, and she was never even actually in kidney failure and the vet should have known that with the small amount of ibuprofen she may have ingested, she wasn't in dire straights.

As for those alternate treatment plans that supposedly didn't exist? We probably could have given her fluids for 12 hours, rechecked her blood (it was fine after that point), and she could have come home. Everything they did for the next 36 hours was profit and torture.