Incompetence

Something happened on Saturday that, while in 1 aspect was extremely relieving, in another made me supremely annoyed at the incompetence of certain people. Specifically, some vets.

For the past.....8 years or so, there's been a hedgehog coming into our garden every so often. For the first 7 years it appeared very infrequently, but over the last 3 months or so it's been incredibly regular. And we've discovered that there's not just the one, but many (at least 6 at 1 point).

About 6 weeks ago, one of them got ill. We found it in daytime in our garden, not a good sign. It was excreting green mush, wasn't eating or drinking and was in a bad way. So we took it to the vet's. The vets gave it some antibiotics and kept it overnight, then gave it us back saying it was eating and drinking again and seemed fine. We took it home, left it some food then reelased it at dusk. It barely budged. It wobbled around like before, diddn't eat or drink anything (bearing in mind it had been back a good 5 hours, with food and water there for it all that time), and seemed no better.

We finally found a hedgehog sanctuary/hospital, and took it there. The operator of the sanctuary said the antibiotics used were wrong, that vets generally don't know how to treat hedgehogs and prefer to treat regular fee-paying domestic pets, and that they probably gave the hog a quick treatment to just pick up the cheque for the care. We left the hog with her to try and get it healthy, but it was too far goen and died.

A week later, another hog gets ill, with the same symptoms, and was covered in over 30 gigantic ticks. We took it straight to the sanctuary, and after 3 weeks of care, it was fully recovered and we brought it home last Saturday (along with a 2nd, much younger, homeless hedgehog).

So in conclusion- (our) vets suck and are incompetent money grabbing gits. We intend to look for a new vetinary clinic. As for our old vets- Fuck them.