I applied for five jobs on Friday. Living in Ottawa and not being bilingual, I’m lucky if I can find even one job to apply for on a typical day. Anyway, Friday I hit the jackpot and applied for five. Last night I got a call, saying I’d been shortlisted for one of them. The interview is this afternoon, and the successful candidate will start tomorrow. It’s only a one-month job, but it looks interesting, it pays well and I want it. (Even if I don’t get the job, I’m happy I finally got a job interview.)
Now I just have to read everything I can find about the organization and the subject matter, find something to wear, and get my dressed-up self downtown in this ice storm. (Speaking of which, what happened to the weather? Wasn’t it supposed to be an unseasonably warm 13 degrees today?)
GC and I went to an estate auction yesterday morning. The selling prices were ridiculously low (eg, $10 for a maple dresser). We had fun but we didn’t buy anything.
In the afternoon we went to the emergency animal hospital because we ran out of insulin for Logan and needed to buy a couple of syringes full. We were standing at the counter, which is in the waiting room, waiting for the clerk to come back, when a man came in. He explained to the other clerk that he’d been in earlier in the day, but his dog had died en route. He’d left his dead dog at the hospital for disposal. He had chosen the mass cremation option, but had since changed his mind. He looked like he was on the verge of tears.
“Let me show me your options,” said the clerk, and went to get the Death Options folder.
“Are you okay?” I asked the man.
“Yeah,” he said. I could see he was being tough and stoic in order to hold himself together and get through this gruesome task.
The clerk returned. She starts explaining all the options. The animal can be cremated in a shared oven, but there’s plenty of distance between all the animals, and the company guarantees that you will get 100% of your own animal’s ashes in an urn and nobody else’s ashes. The cost was a flat rate (maybe $150? $225? I can’t remember) plus 95 cents a pound, plus HST.
She went on to detail the more expensive options, which included individual cremation and satin pouches and so on, but he chose the first one. She looked up his dog’s weight, and prepared the paperwork.
Meanwhile, I’m standing there thinking how tacky the whole thing is. First of all, why would they have this conversation with him in the waiting room? Why not take him into a more private room? Not just for his sake, but for the sake of everybody in the waiting room. They’re all there for emergency appointments on a Sunday afternoon because their pets are gravely ill or injured. I doubt there was a single person in that waiting room who wasn’t mentally multiplying their own pet’s weight by ninety-five. I know I was.
Besides, charging by the pound strikes me as unseemly. When your beloved pet dies, they’re still your beloved pet; they don’t suddenly become so many pounds of tainted meat to be disposed of. Couldn’t they just charge a flat rate for small, medium and large dogs?
Best of luck on your interview today!
Break a leg Zoom!
Best of luck, Zoom. Or, as the French say, merde! (If you don’t get that, please read Finola’s post on being a C student.)
Good luck!!!! Keeping fingers crossed……..
Good luck on the job interview Zoom.
Yes it was very callus of the person at the vets office to not take the man aside for a private conversation.
A good friend recently lost her dog and her vets office suggested this place – Veterinary Referral Cremation Services. My friend found their services to be very respectful and not as costly as she thought it might be.
I don’t suppose the man who lost this dog yesterday reads your blog but, this information may be helpful to other pet owners. The loss of a four legged family member is so difficult and, can be make even more so if doing whatever each person feels best to achieve closure is NOT handled with dignity and respect.
When I lost my dog over a year ago, I was fortunate in that I was able to lay her to rest on some friends’ large farm that she has always loved spending time on but most people don’t have that option.
yep, seems unseemly. our vet clinic made such discussions in a back room.
good luck on the interview and if you get an urge to knit some socks, how about with kevlar yarn? they have it here but the url is absurdly long: http://www.sciplus.com/
By the time you read this the interview will be over, but I hope it went well.
And yeah, the vet staff didn’t do a good job. Sensitivity is useful.
How did the interview go?
Ummm, yeah our clinic talked with us in private
Good luck and congratulations on getting an interview!!
In my experience, the emergency pet hospital is the most expensive place in town, especially during off hours. Re small vs. medium vs. large, I can see someone with a 31 pound dog arguing over whether it is small or medium, so the price per pound thing makes sense to me. Discussing it with a distressed pet owner in the waiting room does not, though.
Hope your interview went well!
Thanks for the good luck wishes for the interview. I don’t think I got the job, though. I’m not sure yet.
As for the animal hospital, I’m glad to hear all your vet offices are more sensitive than this one when it comes to pet disposal options. I think I might send an email to the hospital about this.
The emergency pet hospitals in this city (who are both run by the same people) are not my favorite. I have had the misfortune to require their services only once but I was not impressed by the quality of service they provided for their rather exorbitant fees.
In fact, there are nearly as many vets in this city that I’ve had poor experiences with as ones I’ve had great experiences with. Do your research, folks… I love my current vet, who was found after I lost all confidence in my previous one.
At any rate, the pricing at least does sound reasonable, as my aforementioned fabulous vet gave me the same quote when my cat went down last month. Sadly I couldn’t justify the expense, but they let me keep some of his fur instead.
I hope your interview went well.
Doesn’t word choice make all the difference in these situations? I can see getting stuck, like you did, on the word “weight” but not so much on “size.” So it could go this way:
“The cost is based on the size of the animal. I’ll calculate the total with the HST and be right back.”
Enough information and not quite so brutal. Still, it’s all hard.
That is so sad. When I had to put Pablo to sleep in January the vet posted me a handwritten card two weeks later. She even remembered to mention his “ownership paw”
When we had Einstein put down the vet took us into a room and discussed options. One was him being sent for shared/private cremation, the other was to take him with us for burial, the other was for her to keep him until spring and bury him under the pines across from her clinic. We chose the pine trees and I think of him every time I drive by there.
Right after she told us not to worry about anything, to go home and she’d send us a bill. She sent us a touching pet-based sympathy card a couple weeks afterward along with the bill. It’s was about $150 including the cost of the euthanasia. We’re very lucky to have such a great vet close to home.
Cheers!