To Vet or Not to Vet?

As a homesteader you always try to do things yourself. You save money by doing this, and you also become more self reliant. So what happens if you have an animal that is sick or hurt? Do you take him to the vet? or do you try to resolve the issues on your own? How hard should you try for your animals? How much effort and money should you spend on your animals?

Hunter has his Cone of Shame on and is drowsing on the way home from the vet.

Those are hard questions to ask, and I do not ask them lightly. This week has been a struggle with me and our animals. On Thursday I came home from buying dog food and went to feed the dogs, only to find Hunter covered in blood. Last night as I was feeding and checking on the bunnies, I noticed that Flo wasn't doing very well.

At first I thought Hunter had been attacked. There was a lot of blood. I called Chris and asked what I should do and we decided to take him to the vet. Turns out he's just a big goofy dog that gets his ears caught on things. Almost $100 later, I felt like we could have taken care of him better ourselves.

Chris and I went online to try to figure out what was wrong with Flo, but everything we read said they would have to do expensive diagnostic tests to figure out what was wrong. She was covered in urine and here stools were too soft. She hadn't eaten or had anything to drink. We couldn't see spending thousands of dollars on a vet visit, so we did our best to take care of her here. She didn't make it through the night and I wonder if we should have done something differently.

I think that it definitely comes down to why you are considering a visit to the veterinarian, but I am sure this is one question that I will never quite know the answer to.