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We have had much experience dealing with different veterinarians. We have found that most veterinarians are excellent at what they do. We have found that most veterinay colleges are respectable world wide. However, the veterinary business in North America is not without problems.
We have found that the quality of the veterinarian has little relationship to the price they charge. There is an extremely large range of quality and pricing of veterinarians. If you regard your vet with as much scrutiny as you do your auto mechanic then you will be off to a good start. For example, one vet will charge $70 for a hip X-ray that another will charge $500 for the same service. Misdiagnoses happen. Correct diagnoses and mistreatments also happen, even with very common ailments. Often veterinarians have policies that are not always in the best interest of your dog and they do things to make their job easier even if the procedure is riskier for the dog.
In general we like to use vets that the farmers use, although there are many excellent city vets. This is not just because they are out in the country and tend to have lower prices, but they also see more animals and ailments and tend to be more experienced with recommending low cost treatments. Also, farmers know a lot about their animals, more so then the average dog owner and don't tolerate the practices of charging for things that don't have to be done, or the incorrect/higher cost treatment's for animals.
If the country vets are not convinient enough for you then the best place to get a vet recommendation is your breeder. They currently deal with the vet that they feel is best for their dogs. If your breeder is not local, you might want to survey other breeders/trainers in your area and get recommendations.
Because there is such a discrepancy in prices with veterinary procedures, as a service to our clients, we will advise if a price seems high or low for a particular procedure. (eg. we pay $8CDN for a rabies shot and $29CDN for an office visit with very good veterinarians). There are usually pro's and cons of going to any vet, but there are a few excellent quality vets that do not charge much, the difficult thing is finding them.
Veterinarians and Dog Food
Veterinarian's for the most part do an excellent job of recommending proper nutrition to your dogs. However, if your veterinarian is recommending a particular kind of dog food, even though your dog is healthy, then he may being paid by that company to promote their food. This is how some of the Dog Food industry works. At Labonte Canine Services we believe the vets whom participate in this practice can be biased and inadvertently may not always be acting in the best interest of your dog. For nutrition, dogs are a lot like humans, where by there is no one brand of dog food that will suffice for every dog and every situation. The proper thing for a vet to tell their client is what to look for in the ingredients of dog food, not the brand of dog food. Each breed has slightly different do's and don't's with nutrition and each individual dog depending on activity levels etc... also have specific nutrient needs. The exception to this, of course, is when the vet is trying to treat a specific problem like dissolving struvite stones or mal-nutrition.
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