Aubrie Avila

Review of Animal Internal Medicine and S...

This was the only emergency pet hospital open in S...

This was the only emergency pet hospital open in SF on Sunday evening when we needed to take my puppy that apparently ingested drugs off the streets of San Francisco to emergency. To say the least, we were extremely scared. He s less than one years old miniature Pomeranian. After waiting 1.5 hrs, I called to check in as they said they would treat him right away. Each person I spoke to communicated a different thing to me that was not adding up - including the admin, nurse, and even the doctor. I asked simple questions like: when are you going to treat my dog it s been 1.5 hrs already and I ve now been told it ll be another 1hr+ now, why is there such a lack of communication, what does he s stable mean, when do you think you ll be able to treat him I m very concerned that he s not comfortable waiting for treatment there, etc. The nurse diminished my concern repeatedly by saying my dog was not a priority compared to the other cases and attempting to teach me about what triage means as if relevant to my concern. Then, she gave me an ultimatum that if I didn t want to wait or wasn t happy with the service I could take my dog elsewhere - as if I had a choice and this wasn t an emergency situation. She said so what ll it be? You want us to treat your dog or not? Again, still wasn t clear on how or when they were going to treat my puppy. How does it help to provide general answers with no specific info or process to concerned dog owners that adore their pets and cannot speak for themselves?

This is late at night, of course during COVID so we also can t be with our little one, and we are sitting in our car out front waiting this whole time. There is obvious frustration that will arise and again, there was a total miscommunication between staff. After a little over 2.5 hrs of waiting, the doctor then called saying they finally treated our dog and then proceeded to threatened me that if I wanted to come back to ever receive service there that I have to be respectful. I explained to her pretty calmly that I felt the nurse was being incredibly insensitive and wasn t speaking to me respectfully and that honestly I hope not to come back again because this was an emergency situation where this was the only emergency open and all I wanted was to understand when and how my dog would be treated because I love my dog. Then, in our dogs discharge documents, the doctor who was apparently extremely busy and couldn t treat my dog for 2.5+ hrs, had the time to write a very disrespectful and long note personally attacking me calling me a trantruming child. FYI trantruming is not a word - it s a misspelling, Doctor. And, thanks for obviously taking your stress out on your already stressed our clients who are paying a ridiculous premium to get emergency care for their innocent animals. It s incredibly unprofessional to put a personal attack in the discharge documents for my dog which should outline how I care for him after treatment! How could you feel ok doing such a thing as a Doctor even after already threatening your client on the phone?

I cried in the car holding my dog that was passed out in my arms after the whole situation. I couldn t believe how this emergency situation to help my puppy became such an intense personal attack on me.