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I phoned a vet yesterday to make an appointment for my Orange Winged Amazon parrot who needed her toe looked at.

You can’t take a bird to just any vet — it’s like your VCR now needs CAT5e cables instead of just regular analog cables — it has to be someone experienced with birds and preferably an Avian specialist. I had met this vet many years ago when Ken and I first moved to Greenvillle, but had no idea that she was an avian specialist until I saw her at a dog show about a year ago and she was talking with someone about working on birds. I asked her at that time if she was accepting new patients and she said she was, so when my bird needed to be seen, I called her office to make an appointment.

The young lady who took my call asked why the bird needed to see a vet and I told her about the toe. She said they could see me today (Tuesday) at 11:00am and went on to talk about drawing blood, etc. I told her all that was fine (it costs WAY more for a bird to see a vet than it does a dog, so the first time you go you get sticker shocked pretty hard). She had asked if I could drop the bird off, but I told her that wouldn’t work out too well as I had an hour’s drive to the clinic as it was, so making two back-and-forth trips would be prohibitive both time-wise and gas-wise. I told her I could wait as long as it took to get what they felt needed to be done taken care of. She asked about vaccinations and I told her I thought we should visit vaccinations once we figured out what was wrong with her toe as I didn’t want to compromise her immune system unnecessarily. She ended the conversation by repeating the 11:00 time and taking my phone number.

Thinking I had an appointment all scheduled, I made arrangements with work to take off the necessary time to get there, be seen and get home after the appointment.

Imagine my surprise when I received a message on my cellphone telling me that they were overbooked and that they would not have time to see my bird. I was already on the way there!

I phoned the vet’s office and talked to the young lady who told me since I didn’t want to drop the bird off where they could do what needed to be done between patients that I would have t go to the other avian vet (which is a 30 minute drive further away from me than this one was) . Not even offered to reschedule the appointment (although I was probably already angry enough at the insensitivity of these people to have not accepted one if they had asked me to reschedule). I kept trying to tell her that I would wait as long as it took, but they didn’t like the idea of someone sitting in their waiting room I guess.

Anyway, I ended up going to the other avian vet (phone call to them had them saying “come right away!”) and the visit taking about an hour after I got there for them to examine the bird, draw blood and do a smear of the lump on her toe. She may end up losing the toe, but for now she’s on antibiotic and pain meds along with a topical lotion to soothe it. She’s been sleeping most of the afternoon, which is probably good for her. Poor baby was so upset over all the manhandling that she had to endure today from everyone!

I will certainly NOT be recommending that vet to anyone and it’s going to be very awkward if I see her at another dog show, too. I’m usually pretty quick to get over being slighted personally, but this was one of my babies that needed help and I won’t be so quick to forgive a slight to a critter in need.

If it were you in my shoes, how would you have felt? Would you have dealt with the situation any differently?

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