Pet medical issues happen. We are not perfect. As much as I don’t like to admit we are not foolproof at Pet Camp, sometimes we make a mistake. But when we do, we admit it, try to learn from it and of course don’t expect a client to pay for it. But sometimes, things happen that have nothing to do with Pet Camp and some clients still expect us to pay for it. Here’s a somewhat unique example.
We had a new doggie camper who stayed with us recently. We picked the camper up in the Pet Camp Express, brought him to Pet Camp where he played in our active adult playgroup for 4 days, and we took him home and dropped him off. The stay went great! Absolutely no problems to report home — a good dog who had a blast. Through the entire process we never interacted with the pet parent in person (she wasn’t there when we picked up or dropped off).
About an hour or so after we dropped off, we got a frantic call from the dog’s parent (a woman) who was very concerned that her dog had an erection and what did we do to cause it! We calmly explained that we had not seen any erection while the dog was with us but perhaps he was just overly stimulated and that it would probably pass. She called back later even more upset because his penis had not retracted. We explained that it would probably retract on its own but that she could put some lubricant and a cold compress on the dog’s penis to expedite things (we knew better than simply suggesting a cold shower, a knock on the door by a child, or a phone call from your mother-in-law as suggested remedies). She rejected our advice and ran over to the vet with her dog’s erect penis (we hope she actually drove rather than making her dog run in that condition!).
Once at the hospital, the veterinarian did the exact same thing we encouraged her to perform and all was well — or so we thought. We got another call from the client that the veterinarian had said that the penis had been erect for days and that there could have been serious damage. Now we knew this couldn’t be true for two reasons: (1) There is simply no way we would have not noticed a dog with an erection for days — I mean, really? And (2) Like everyone else in North America who watches T.V. we know to seek immediate medical attention for an erection lasting more than four hours!
Moreover, she wanted to us to pay a very significant veterinary bill for this pet medical issue. Even more outrageous is the fact that the amount she wanted us to pay was twice the amount of the actual veterinary bill for de-erecting her dog’s penis (did she not think what we would want to see the actual invoice?) because she decided to buy pet insurance at her veterinarian and wanted Pet Camp to pay for a year’s worth of insurance!
So how did this end up?
- We did pay the de-erecting portion of the vet bill. As much as we know that her dog’s erection had nothing to do with us, it simply wasn’t worth fighting over. (I mean, really, we don’t want to flatter ourselves so much as to think that a dog would get an erection hours after leaving Pet Camp just thinking about the fun he had while here.)
- Treating an erection at a veterinarian’s office is a lot more expensive than the cost of a little lube and a pair of plastic gloves (think Animal House here if you’re old enough to remember that movie).
- Some people will simply try and dick you over and there’s just not too much you can do about it.
- Finally, there are some stories about running Pet Camp that you just can’t make up.
Thanks for reading.