I can’t tell you how many vets seem to give dogs or cats no chance when that isn’t the case. I saw it time and again on the Cushings list and people would come on and say they have a vet who doesn’t even want to treat, says there is no hope... makes you wonder why some go to school to become vets.
I really think it’s the time lag thing. It’s a pretty new part of our culture that people are willing to spend huge amounts of time and money to keep their pets healthy and extend their lifespans way beyond what nature had in mind. Until fairly recent years, if vets suggested long term medical treatment for a pet, 99.9% of owners would say no (and quite a lot still do). So most older vets — those who have mentored and taught the vets who are now middle-aged — just never got well-informed on the details of what’s involved. I’m sure it will change, but it takes time.
For perspective, the Feline CRF group gets a number of cat owners from the UK, and it’s like pulling teeth to convince a UK vet that it’s actually possible and practical for a pet owner to administer fluids at home, even on a short term basis. The veterinary culture there is well behind that in the US. In many cases, people have had to take their vets piles of print-outs from the group’s posts and US veterinary professional sources, to convince the vet that home fluid administration isn’t a wildly irrational idea. In some cases, even measures like that haven’t worked, and the owner has had to shop around 3 or more vets before finding one that can be persuaded that an ordinary pet owner is capable of inserting an admin line into a bag of fluid, attaching a needle to the end of the admin line, putting the needle into kitty, turning on the flow, reading the marking on the bag to see when the desired amount of fluid has gone in, turning off the flow, and pulling the needle out of kitty.