Willow’s Vet Bills

Hi Everyone! First of all thank you for clicking on this link! The beautiful pup in the photos is Willow. She is such an amazing dog, she’s my beautiful assistance dog and my key to the outside world.

Unfortunately she became very suddenly unwell at the end of august which let to vets trips. The original vets we saw were extremely dismissive and sent us away saying it was a behavioural issue. We went to our assistance dog organisation who assessed willow and agreed that it wasn’t behavioural and gave us a list of tests to get done which could explain her symptomsSo off we went back to the vets who performed these tests on our request. With some coming back as normal and some not she was sent for an additional follow up test which came back normal. So again we were told it was behavioural and to see a behaviourist. We got another vet from the same practice to look over her notes and she came to the same conclusion however would also refer to a specialist at my request. They referred us to both and I waited for the appointments. In the meantime this was taking weeks due to waiting for test results to come back and poor willow was suffering. 

We eventually got in to see the specialist and I was so happy. I thought finally we will get the much needed answers and willow on the mend! She had been unwell and seeing the vets for almost two months at this point. Unfortunately I couldn’t have been more wrong. They looked at the notes of the original vets thinking they’d done the testing on their own accord not that I’d had to fight to get them done. They kept her in all day and repeated lots of tests that had already been done, racking up quite the bill with the addition of one test which was done basically to fob us off so they could say they’d done something. They too came to the conclusion it was behavioural.

At this point I was distraught my lifeline that had spent two years looking after me was suffering and there was seemingly nothing I could do to get the vets to listen to me. I received the report for the day at the specialist and it showed how much they didn’t listen to me or read the documents I gave them. Apparently she was a gundog in training and she was aggressive? I sent her in with a letter from her assistance dog trainer that they had written after assessing her that clearly stated she was an assistance dog, the symptoms she’d been experiencing and their observations from a trainers point of view. It took me a few days to get over this as I was trying to hard for her and no one was listening. Everyone that’s in willows life could see her suffering yet to the vets she was fine. 

I paid for a behaviourist appointment separately to the vets referral as I wasn’t happy waiting any longer (we still haven’t received that appointment to this day). Willow had a full assessment from the behaviourist and within minutes of hearing her symptoms and seeing the dog in front of her she knew it wasn’t behavioural but continued the entire assessment to be sure. She came to the conclusion that this wasn’t even slightly a behavioural issue and definitely a medical one. I decided I wasn’t going back to those original vets and trying to argue with them as I felt they still wouldn’t take me seriously even with proof it wasn’t behavioural. So I found a new vets, one that came highly recommended by a good friend and off we went.

 I was extremely nervous as I felt they’d fob us off like everywhere else did but to my pleasant surprise they could clearly see something was wrong and frowned upon what the previous vets had done. After two vets and a specialist we’d finally found a vet to help us! Since then willow has been undergoing even more tests to get to the bottom her her case. We still don’t have a diagnosis yet and but the vets are working their way through things and I feel confident they’ll find out what’s wrong soon. Our new vet absolutely loves willow and has said how sweet she is. 

Unfortunately with how long this has gone on, the faffing around of the other vets and insurance not covering everything we are officially all out of funds. There’s several tests the new vets would like doing which we are unable to get done for her, with one being over £1000. This is why I have made this page to try and raise some funds for willow so she’s able to get the tests she needs and start getting better.



Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. Let’s get goofy wills back to herself