Animal Poison Control Is The Stupidest Thing Maybe Ever

This is a job AI can't replace fast enough

I got back from Europe yesterday to discover my mini dachshund repeatedly throwing up. I’m talking like 6 or 7 times in the span of 3 hours. It turns out that he ate a bit of the root of a pokeweed, which a quick Google search told me was very toxic for dogs.

So, I called the vet and tried to schedule an ER appointment, but they told me they couldn’t do much until I called Animal Poison Control. This didn’t make any sense to me. You’re a vet. Why do you need the help of some third party to treat my pet?

But whatever, I called the poison control line. 10-minutes later, I’m still on hold and he’s still throwing up. Fuck this, I’m going to the vet anyway. It’s a 20-minute drive, so they will definitely pick up on the way over.

Yeah, sike. 30-minutes later, and still nothing. Finally, as I pull into the vet, the poison control people pick up. They ask some basic questions, put me back on hold for 5 minutes, and tells me that my dog’s going to be fine, he just has to take some medication. For the pleasure of that five-minute call, I was charged $95. $95 for information that I literally could’ve got on ChatGPT.

Fluids, anti-nausea medication, and gastroprotectants were the exact medicines prescribed to him. So, forgive me, but I’m feeling like the animal poison control people just got one over me, and I don’t understand why the vet needed their help to tell me stuff that is easily findable online.

It’s not like I have a bald eagle or some other exotic pet. I have a dog that ate a plant in a rural area. They must’ve seen this exact case 1000 times before. How do they not know how to treat it? What are they even doing?

Beyond that, I don’t see why a vet who can see my pet in person would rely on the advice of somebody who is only on the phone and asking the most basic questions. It’s not like they were going in-depth. How old is your dog, how much does he weigh, how much did he eat, when did he eat it, and what are his symptoms? That’s it. They then took those answers, probably put them into ChatGPT, and robbed me of $95. Again, why couldn’t the vet just do that?!

So, like poison control, I asked ChatGPT why the vet requires me to contact poison control.

Maybe a poison control line made sense in the age before the internet, but it makes zero sense today if all they do is input superficial questions into ChatGPT anyway. The whole thing is a huge grift and slows down treatment, and the only reason it still exists is because vets would rather do the easy job of handing out medicine than the hard and potentially litigious job of actually diagnosing the animal. You know, the actual important part.

God, I can’t wait for AI to launch these grifters into the sun of unemployment.