#it may be unethical but i am getting her debarked

[monstriiss]

not me desperately yearning to reach out to people but being dragged away by my heels down a dark hole never to be seen again-

[ask-a-vetblr]

Hey! I have something that’s been bugging me for a while. I (briefly) worked as a veterinary assistant for a small veterinary practice. While I was there, I quickly became uncomfortable with the fact the clinic did debarkings and declawing and decidedly to leave as I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle watching that stuff done long term. One of the vets there also assisted with an artificial insemination of a dog that, in his own words, was not a good candidate for breeding. My question is—are things like these (i.e. having declawing and debarking as available procedures, doing AIs on animals that shouldn’t be bred) typical? Do practices have to do them to stay in business/keep customer relations intact? Can vets refuse to do procedures they are uncomfortable with or find to be unethical?

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise!

Vet-and-wild here.

It does ultimately vary by practice, but the American Veterinary Medical Association does recommend against these procedures, meaning doing them as a first line treatment would not be considered best practice or gold standard medicine. I am not currently aware of any vet schools that have debarking (or tail docking and ear cropping for that matter) as part of their curriculum. Declawing is being phased out. I can’t speak for every school, but our declaw lab was mainly toe amputations and telling us why we shouldn’t declaw. We really only got to try out the techniques on specimens briefly so we knew what was involved. So if a vet wants to learn to do any of those elective procedures they are very likely going to have to seek them out. Maybe they start at an old school practice and learn either by necessity or because they’re interested. But regardless, these techniques are being phased out and likely won’t be done by most new grads.

In terms of why clinics do these, it depends. There are some old school vets that just don’t think these procedures are wrong. Declawing just used to be the thing you did. You’d spay/neuter and declaw all your cats. So some of them still don’t have a problem doing it. Others see doctors like that and offer these services so it can be done “right”. Pain meds, newer techniques, etc. Some doctors would rather see it done with the highest possible quality on the assumption that people who really want this stuff done will get it done anyway. Another reason is that some vets feel that these techniques are ok as a last resort to prevent euthanasia/abandonment. They try to talk the owner out of it but would rather declaw than euthanize.

As to your question about refusing to do stuff, we can. We have no legal obligation to do a treatment or surgery. However, we won’t be protected if our employer doesn’t agree with our decision (unless specifically outlined in the contract). Most employers are understanding about these kind of procedures, but theoretically it could be a problem. In school we were always told to not do anything that would keep us up at night. Sometimes that means having an owner sign an against medical advice (AMA). Sometimes it’s flat out refusing a service.

The situation you brought up with the breeding is definitely a grey area. Is it a situation where the dog’s health is at risk with a pregnancy? That’s something that may hold up. Or is it a dog that isn’t a good representation of their breed? Frankly, that’s not our business. Do we get extremely frustrated with the back yard breeders and try to discourage them from having more litters? Absolutely. But we can only recommend against breeding, we can’t force people to not breed their dogs. While in theory the vet in question could refuse to AI the dog, that would be a really rough line in the sand. That’s something that could get messy really fast.

gettingvetted here:

I just wanted to briefly add - my first practice offered declawing, dog breeding, and tail docking. I straight up told the practice owner at my hiring that I would not do those. Sometimes the staff would tell me that the next appointment was a litter tail dock and I would tell them that those people could wait for another doctor to be available or reschedule, because I would not be handling their appointment. If the practice owner wanted to, she could’ve fired me for refusing to perform the services, but she definitely wasn’t in a position to do that, and most clinics right now are not. They can’t ethically force you to do anything - just like I wouldn’t perform amputations, because on my surgery days at that practice I was alone in the satellite office and I wouldn’t do a procedure as major as that without direct supervision the first time. They really can’t fault you for it.

In my program we were not taught the procedures for breeding, declawing, tail docking, etc. On our soft tissue surgery rotation there were elective procedures scheduled on Mondays and students could sign up to perform said elective procedures (on any other surgeries, we didn’t actually perform, just observed); usually these were spays and neuters but we did have one declaw scheduled on my 4 week rotation. If nobody had signed up to perform that procedure, they wouldn’t have forced us (although a student would have been required to take the case on a before- and aftercare basis).

This is also an ethical dilemma in the horse and cattle breeding world - many vets are stuck repeatedly trying to get animals pregnant that clearly should not be, whether due to age, health issues, poor conformation, poor care from owners, or just not getting pregnant despite extensive human intervention. In cattle these animals are usually culled due to reproductive unsoundness, but with horses the tendency is to just push harder, or end up trying to get embryos for placement in recipient mares that are more capable of carrying a pregnancy.

I think my previous boss offered those procedures mostly so that animals didn’t end up in the shelters or tossed outside, and so that breeders would like her and use her to offer a bare minimum standard of care for their animals (all the breeders in that super rural area were terrible).