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| Suki, hard at "work" in our office all those years ago--and still today serving as my guiding spirit to help as many people as possible avoid the kind of BadVet who killed her. |
Suki's
blog turns one today—the first of what I hope will be many years of
helping people to become more informed veterinary consumers and most
importantly, know what to do to keep their pets safe at the vet's and
what to do to vets who don't.
I
can't believe the thousands of page views the blog has generated in
just a year. Of course we're nowhere near the numbers of our mother
site, The Veterinary Abuse Network (VAN). Vetabusenetwork.com
has been up in one form or another continuously since 2000 and has
built an amazing following of bereaved and outraged pet owners and
guardians eager for anything that would provide information about
BadVets and the systems that protect them. In 2012 alone VAN
had 26,623 unique visitors; 40,761 visits; 106,216 pages viewed; and
369,613 hits. Add the previous eleven years and that's an awful lot
of people searching for information and resources on everything from
How
to File a Complaint Against a Vet to
watching out for "bargain basement" vets who practice
substandard care in Beware
of Dr. CheapVet,
and of course the horror that started it all: my precious
companion's fight for life in Suki's
Story.
But
Suki's Safe Haven is still a baby, and we're just getting started. I
can tell you in our first year our most popular post has been Filing
a Complaint With Your State Board: Why Do It. That
tells me I need to do more posts that help people file complaints
with their state boards. I know it's daunting to take on this huge,
oppressive machine of vets (and their lawyers), state boards (and
their lawyers), the state's Veterinary Medical Associations (and
their lawyers), but the fact is that I always urge victims to file on
their BadVets no matter how small the odds are that anything will be
done. As a recent victim reminded me, it's about exposure—the bane
of every lying, sneaky, manipulative, incompetent, negligent,
malpracticing vet. Even one complaint can catch the worst of these
creeps—and it just might be yours. Let's keep up the pressure on
these boards to do their job and hold these BadVets accountable in
ways serious enough to deter any other creep from doing the same
thing. Period.
A
post that surprised me with its popularity was the one on Gene
Giggleman, DVM: “Think There Are No Cruel Vets?”
Maybe that's because Giggleman was getting some pretty scary press
elsewhere: Read about his other shenanigans in the excellent story by
reporter Yamil Berard in the April 5, 2012 Fort
Worth Star Telegram: “Grapevine veterinarian acknowledges issuing
blank health forms for raided business.”
And
there's more...
Not
surprisingly, our most popular page was The
Lawsuit.
If you haven't yet read how Edward J. Nichols of Crestway Animal
Clinic came after me with three bottom-feeding lawyers in a bully
SLAPP suit to try to take away my First Amendment rights with first a
temporary injunction and then a permanent one (he failed at both),
take a few minutes--you might enjoy the tail, um, tale
of a cowardly vet who waved the white flag the night before
trial. I still smile every time I think of my attorney telling me
when it was over: “Julie, you kicked his ass.” And now with Texas
enacting anti-SLAPP legislation,
it will be even harder for bully vets like Ed Nichols and Crestway
Animal Clinic to use their wealth and the legal system to try to
intimidate, threaten, or force a victim into silence. If you've been
sued by a bully vet who doesn't want the public to know what he or
she did to your pet and is willing to pay big bucks to tear your life
apart, I
want to know about it.
The public has the right to know who and where these creeps are
operating.
The
subject of “Vaccinations:
What You Don't Know About Them Can Kill Your Pet”
led to steady traffic for Texan
Jena Gonzalez's fight to Educate Before You Vaccinate.
Speaking of education, years after her death, Mattie's
Story
still touches many about what can happen when an arrogant vet ignores
the principle of informed consent and decides to take matters into
his own hands, in this case Dr. Bob Esplin of Sylvania Veterinary
Hospital in Toledo, Ohio. Read Esplin's in-your-face quote and wonder
how many other pets suffered Mattie's fate?
And
so many, many more stories. Check out the archives of 2012 to see
what you missed, and share this blog with all the animal lovers in
your life. They need to know what can happen to their pets at a vet's
office--and what happens when the vet gets away with it with the help
of their staff, techs, other vets, their insurance companies, their
lawyers, and the state board systems that are supposed to be
protecting our pets, not
the vets. Some of them even hire webmasters (or as I call some of
them--spam-masters) to try to "bury" the rankings of
negative reviews and web sites, too
stupid to know how much trouble that will get them in,
but then stupidity is rampant among BadVets. How stupid? Too stupid
to know how stupid they really are. Which works in your favor.
Believe it.
To
everybody who writes about and fights against BadVets, I cannot thank
you enough for your work, support and encouragement. It's a whole new
world of communication out there and it is growing exponentially as a
true network of veterinary victims evolves into the next
generation--savvy, smart, kick-ass, informed
consumers
to hopefully take the place of the old, tired, ignorant guard who
thinks all vets love animals and none of them makes any money.
BadVets cannot do what they do without your blind trust. Stop handing
it over because they have a white coat and a stethoscope and they're
so "nice" and "cheap." Do your homework. I
believe most vets are good in the same way I believe most people are
good--but it's not enough. This is a profession that has enjoyed
secrecy and protection behind closed doors for too long, and it's
time to drag some of these vampires out into the sunlight and watch
them shrivel up.
Although
I write alone, Suki is still hard at work as my guiding spirit, and
we will always be a team. Without her strength and her will to live
even through the most hideous and prolonged mistreatment imaginable,
there would be no vetabusenetwork.com, no Suki's Story, no Suki's
Safe Haven, and no future foundation that I hope to establish to help
veterinary victims in real, tangible ways. It is my dream to
bring together enough people to get laws changed, policies improved,
and most of all,
transparency in
the systems that have enjoyed their little secret, closed-door
dealings to protect the worst of these monsters.
In
the meantime, Suki and I will continue to work hard to do everything
we can to help keep people's pets safe at the vet. We can't do it
alone. Keep writing, keep fighting, keep connecting, posting,
sharing, tweeting, blogging, and spreading the message—especially
the message that we will continue to send to every incompetent,
negligent, sloppy, careless, lazy, arrogant vet who ever harmed or
killed someone's beloved companion:
We
will never forget. We will never be silenced.
Don't
miss any posts! Subscribe by email in the box at upper right, under
Suki's picture. Your address will never be shared in any way.
For
information on filing a complaint with your state board, go to Filing
a Complaint Against Your Vet or
contact me here: Suki's
Safe Haven
