Two weeks ago Wednesday I removed 35 stones from the bladder of a Japanese Chin (an annoying, yappy, little brachycephalic breed that generally fall into the classification of ‘armpit pet’).

Neither the surgery, the breed, nor the number of stones that I removed were at all remarkable. It’s a straightforward surgical procedure and while 35 mineral crystals is, yes, a lot to have banging around inside your bladder it was by no means the most, either by volume or by number, that I’ve encountered so far.
Nor was the price of the surgery in any way unusual. The total cost of the procedure was around $950. That’s actually fairly reasonable considering the time the procedure took (a little over 40 minutes) and the pre and postoperative care the dog received.

No, the weird part of this procedure was the method of payment. See the owner couldn’t pay for the procedure herself so she “held a fundraiser”. Which in this day and age means that she set up a Gofundme site so she could ask friends, family, and totally random strangers to pay for what is ultimately her responsibility.
Because one of my receptionists is Facebook friends with a friend of the owner, my receptionist got included on the list of people who were asked to help pay for the surgical procedure. So my receptionist knows that the dog’s owner ended up raising enough to pay for the surgery (around $980 in fact).

Okay. All very well and good. Except, and you knew that this was coming, when the owner came to pick up the dog on the day of surgery she said that she could only pay us $400, she didn’t know when she’d be able to pay us the rest, and it was going to be around the end of September before she could even consider a payment plan on the rest of the bill.
Our office manager is a wonderful woman, a passionate animal lover, superb at her job, and NOT one you want to get crossways with. Since the receptionist had, happily, let us all know about the Gofundme appeal before the surgery the office manager knew that the dog’s owner had enough money to pay for the surgery. And while the office manager didn’t tell the dog’s owner that she knew about the Gofundme site, nor did she say any of the snarky things that all of us want to say, she did give the dog’s owner a flat, fishy, stink eye and told her that she had to pay the rest of her bill by the end of August and that she was going to get an imprint of the debit card which was going to be run on August 31st if the bill wasn’t paid by then.
At which point the dog’s owner started in with the expected wailing and rending of garments about how she didn’t know how she was going to purchase groceries or pay her rent or…… which was, of course, ignored.

The drama isn’t over of course. There’s still an outstanding balance on that account and the client has been marked as “no service” until the bill is paid. We won’t know how it ends until the bill is paid in full.

But that’s the reason I won’t ever donate to a Gofundme site or, with very, very strict exceptions, to any Kickstarter campaign. And that’s the reason I don’t ever give money to panhandlers. I have absolutely no idea what this dog’s owner did with the vast majority of the money she raised for her dog’s surgery — the dog whose medical condition she exploited for the purpose of coaxing money out of soft hearted strangers. I don’t really care what she did with the rest of the money she raised. Whatever she did it was reprehensible because she lied to the donors about how she’d spend their money.

I guess I should be sorry for her because she doesn’t have friends or family from whom she can borrow money when she needs it (and y’all know if you really need money you can ask us, right?). But instead I’m just pissed because she lied to me.