Hello, I have a question regarding the rights that we have regarding payment of vet services. A few weeks ago my sisters pet had an incident where she needed a foreign object removed from her stomach and so was taken to their local vet services. They did their scan to locate the object and decided that due to the fact that they did not have the equipment to make the removal easier, they would instead go through with an operation to cut it out. They put her under anesthesia and then found that the object was instead in the throat and so decided that they could not continue. They stitched her back up and told us that she was to be referred to another vets. They said that they had emptied the stomach but could not do anything else. When it came to collecting the dog we found that no one was monitoring her in her condition and she was carried out in her dirty harness which was close to touching her new wounds.
When at the second vets they found that the object was still in the stomach but it was not where the others had cut, they also found that the animal was under too much anesthesia and so there was a very high risk of continuing. After the procedure the second vets told us that the dog’s stomach was still full of food so the previous vets had lied.
Their mistake put her dog through two intense operations which then required a feed tube, and may have put her life at risk
The first vet wasn't willing to transfer her if we couldn't take her ourselves, despite the situation when at the beginning they made out it was an intense situation in need of fast action. They also waited for her to wake up to move her. Which then meant that the second vets had to potentially put her under two extra doses of anesthesia which if we wasn't as fast as we was (she was still pretty sleepy so they chose that opportunity) Would have killed her.
My sister recently received a bill from the first vets for £600, despite the fact that the only thing they did was stitch her back up after making a mistake. I was wondering if they are still entitled to claim a payment from us, even though they did not do the procedure that was requested.