Online Advice for Pet, Good OR Bad..?

 

Say No to Online Consultation for Pet’s Health:

Hy..This is Dr Zahid Afzal from General Veterinary Hospital Lahore, today I want to discuss with you a very important topic which could lead to even death of our pet. The topic is getting online consultation about your pets. Do you think is it ok for you to take an online advice from any person about ongoing health issue of your pet…? No..? Yes..? Let me give you an example, suppose you got diabetes from last two years, now suddenly one day you got an severe attack sue to high blood pressure and now you are unable to visit any hospital or clinic or any doctor. Suppose in this situation you called your friend who is also diabetic from last 15 years, and he/she advice you to take a random Pill ABC. As soon as you took that pill, you fell down and got unconscious. Now what would be the reason of this according to you..? Let me tell the exact reason, there are many medications that impact on body depending on drug adoption system of that body. Sometime our body doesn’t accept those medications which recovered 100s of people already in same condition. So drug adoption is the phenomenon that occurs in each and every body of living organisms.

Consultation OR Advice from Experienced Persons:

Similarly is the case with pets, you can’t take advice from anyone who is experienced in keeping pets from last 10 or 15 years, because may be the solution he/she is telling is effective for his/her animals or pets but could be deadly for your pet or animal. Every pet specially cats and dogs have different types of immune systems and their upgradtions are also different.  So by taking a random advice from an experienced person could be lethal to your Pets. What we usually do on online platforms..? I would like to explain it step by step:

1.       Face book posts, where we asked about recommendations from so called experienced persons.

2.       Twitter tweets asking for online help.

3.       Quora Questions and seeking answers for it.

4.       Instagram stories about health issues and their remedies.

5.       And a lot of videos on YouTube.

So by taking above steps we seek help from so called experience persons and most of the cases when we applied these methods, medications and tips on our pet than our pet got expired or even get worse. So my question here is that now to whom you will blame..? Experienced person..?Vet …? Or yourself..?

Your pet may not be your whole life but you could be his/her complete life. Just think on it that you have only person in your life who is taking responsibility of you, who is feeding you, who listen you and who love to you. Suddenly this one person starts some sort of experiments on you, so what will be your reaction. Here one thing which is more important is that you can’t even speak against that person’s action. What will be your answer..? I hope I will get a big NO answer in this regard. Now place your pet at that place which I mentioned above, this is the pain what your pet feels.

Consultations from Vet online:

Now here comes at another point that you stop taking opinions from random persons but start taking tips from a registered vet. Now here I would like to ask you that if your kid has a fever what you would do... Would you like to visit a doctor or would you call a doctor saying that I can’t come up at the clinic please advise me some medications (whatever the reason for not going to Vet’s clinic is)..?I hope NO, you will take your kid to the hospital or clinic as soon as possible. So why we show this type of behavior for pets only, why we don’t take them to vets, why we were remaining waiting for a miracle…? It’s the important issue these days that about 80% of pet owners prefer to take online advice instead of visiting the vet clinics. As far as my experience concerns below are the reasons for not visiting the Vet clinic.

1.       Having guests at home

2.       Having no one to drive a car

3.       No money or worried about bills

4.       Sick by himself or herself

5.       Having no time due to office and other routines

According to me these all are lame excuses, and get rid of these excuses is actual humanity which we need these days badly. I have personally witnessed many pet owners who reached me when their pet is near to death almost, even they bring dead bodies to my clinic, upon asking the reason they that from last two days he/she had this ABC problem but we were unable to visit any vet before. So at that time I just say usually one thing that why you bring now..? Actually being a human being its embarrassment for all of us, that one poor speechless soul left us without giving his/her reaction.

Conclusion:

I won’t ask you to pay heavy bills of any pet clinic, just find some economical vet in your area and be in contact with him/her throughout the week. Whenever your pet got any symptoms, just call the Vet and ask him what to do..? If he say bring the patient at clinic than go for that, don’t force the vet to prescribe you on the phone. How a Vet can examine the following thing on phone call

a.       Temperature of Patient

b.      Respiration rate of patient

c.       Pulse rate of Patient

d.      Mucosa of patient

e.      Skin position of pet

f.        Abdominal alterations of patient

g.       CRT/ECG/Xrays/ Ultrasonography

And there are many things. So lastly I would like to request that please avoid using home remedies for your pets and avoid taking online suggestions. I hope my article could change the thinking of many pet owners which is not only beneficial for pet owner but also its beneficial for the pet also. Keep me remember me in your prayers. Stay blessed