Quote Originally Posted by tigerlily View Post
I pretty much agree with Dale. I have spent $2000 on two cats once. My senior dog (14) just had surgery, and I did opt out of the pathology report since it wouldn't matter if the growth was benign or not. Not because of expense, but I'm not going to put my dog through chemo at 14 years of age. I will treat her symptoms and quality of life as my priorities. Although I did put off the surgery because I feared she wouldn't make it. To my surprise she is even more spunky now! It was well worth the vet bill for sure.
A year ago my now 8 year old Doberman had a tumor on her gum line that the Vet found when he was cleaning her teeth that the vet thought looked cancerous. I told him to remove it (another appointment) and 3 golf ball size fatty tumors that she had, one on her ankle where it was always getting bumped. He put her under anesthesia and found that her mouth tumor was into the bone and took much more time and work than was expected to remove in it's entirety. It proved to be benign in the lab analysis. When he was removing the fatty tumors he discovered a cancerous tumor in her armpit area (for lack of a better word). That was another big and unexpected procedure. The Vet made a lot of money that day. I had another dog once break a rear leg and had a vet install a titanium rod in her leg. Over the years I have spent a lot of money for veterinary care, but I would never give a Vet carte blanche authority to go wild in my pocket.