WTF Happened to my Friendly Neighbourhood Vet Office?

Did I worry you all? Were you thinking: Wednesday is ticking away and no WTF post yet!?! Were you thinking I lost my edge or maybe was in too good a mood?

Nahhhh, I am always annoyed enough for WTF... so don't fret.

This week I am a little peeved at my local Vet office. I am attaching the letter I have written to them for you to have a peek at. I am not putting their name in the letter as I have no desire to slander their name and I hope my letter elicits a positive response from them and a favourable outcome to my concerns.

Sorry for the length... by posting this letter I am breaking one of my golden rules: keep it short biotch!

My little letter:

To the Staff of Blank Veterinary Hospital,

I was prompted to write this letter because of two events that happened at the end of 2009 that left our family upset and disappointed and, due to our family’s long standing history with Blank Veterinary Hospital, I felt it important to detail this disappointment in an attempt to instill some perspective at the practice that I think has been lost.

Our family, The Aitken/Salmons family, has been bringing our beloved pets to the Blank Veterinary office for almost twenty years now. We have experienced great joys in that office and great sorrow. We have said goodbye to pets within those walls and proudly introduced new ones. Over the years, we have never hesitated to recommend your practice to friends and family because we truly believed in the stellar level of care and attention your practice was able to provide, until now.

We have several animals, more than we should, who mostly came to us out of sad circumstances that left us unable to let them go. My mother passed away when I was 21, leaving us with her cats, and even though I already had two cats of my own, I was unable to part with her three, bringing our total to a whopping five. Furthermore, we added a Dog to our family five years ago because we knew we wanted our children to grow up with a dog in their home. Needless to say, ours is a pet centered home.

Though these animals have been a gift, they have also been a burden in the financial sense. But, it has always been a burden, which we have shouldered gladly, first as a struggling young couple and now as a young family.  I believe we have always gone above and beyond with regards to our pets. A glance at your records will indicate that they have had many health issues including: cryptococcosis, urinary blockages, several abscesses, dental interventions, hyperthyroid, kidney issues, etc. The list is long and I think we have more than demonstrated over the years that we love our animals and have chosen the best course of action and treatment humanly and financially possible for them.

Our circumstances are different now than before we had children, we have to be decisive about what we spend our money on. It is not that our animals’ health has been downgraded, by no means; it is that we really have to consider the expenses before hand. No knee jerk spending so to speak and yes, at times we need to cap the spending possible because we do not have thousands of dollars just lying around.

However, even with this slightly declining ability to lavish money on our pet’s treatment, in no way do I think we deserve the declining level of care we have received over the last few years that has blatantly come to a head in the last month or so.

My husband visited the office not long ago, to pick up Revolution for our strictly indoor cat Tripod, and was chastised and needled about her not having been in for a check-up recently. The staff went as far as to try and refuse him the medication. I find this absolutely ridiculous. Tripod is a healthy and happy indoor cat, if we felt she needed Vet attention, she would be swept up and brought in immediately. I resent that fact that he was treated that way and made to feel as if we do not care for her well when we absolutely do! I was willing to let that incident go and just write it off as a misunderstanding until something happened to our dog Sounder in December.

We live just down the road from the Veterinary office and are close to the hospital and the psychiatric hospital and therefore, we have two mental health outpatient homes in close proximity of our home that treat youth dealing with Schizophrenia. We have had small neighbourhood problems due to this but have always been supportive and obliging, as we believe integration of mentally ill individuals is an important part of community.

On the evening of December 15^th, two individuals from one of the outpatient homes took our dog from our driveway and walked him down to the Vet’s office. Why Sounder was out of doors, we are unsure. We have a three-year-old who has recently discovered the joy of locks and has taken it upon himself to ‘let the dog out’. We believe he may be the culprit.

Luckily, Sounder is the type of dog who will not leave his yard and we are not the type of owners who test his resolve; he has never been lost or missing in all the time we have owned him. However, on this night he was and our entire neighbourhood mobilized searching for him as soon as we discovered he was gone.  He is a well-known and beloved dog on our street and everyone was concerned.

Finally after 45 agonizing minutes of searching, two clearly dubious and mentally unwell young men admitted they had found him in our driveway (yes in our yard) and thought him lost and walked him down to the local Vet office. Why they did this we have no idea! Obviously, if they had first knocked on our door, or any door for that matter, they would have been able to easily discover that Sounder belonged to us!

Their actions were disappointing for sure but what was more disappointing was how your office dealt with this. When two highly suspect looking young men bring a dog to the Vet’s office door, I would assume someone at the office would think to check their records and try to contact our family. I admit, Sounder was not wearing his collar, it bothers him and we only put it on him for walks and, since he was let out unexpectedly, he was not wearing it. But, he is a pure bred Golden Retriever and has a tattoo in his ear, I am sure the staff could have easily identified who he was if they had taken a moment.

Instead of taking into consideration the type of people who had turned him in and attempting to rectify the situation, your office called the Pound and sent Sounder away. We had called the office several times and had no answer, my Husband had run down there and had to bang on the door several times yelling through a small crack in the door to get the staff to come and tell him where Sounder had been sent.

Luckily, within a short time and a hefty fee, Sounder was rejoined with his family and we are grateful for that. But, I am not writing this letter to describe a happy ending but rather to reemphasis to your staff and practice as a whole that clients are not just dollars and cents. My experiences of late tell me that you have forgotten that and it saddens me that we are now considering taking our business elsewhere. We love our animals and want the best for them but I also choose not to spend my family’s hard earned money in a place that does not respect it or us.

I hope that you take this letter and share it with all your staff and see it as an opportunity to emphasis what I thought your Vet practice was about. It has been a long time since I have experienced what I would call excellent, individual and understanding care at Blank Veterinary Hospital. I think you could all use a reminder of your client’s perspective and I hope this letter does just that.

Sincerely,

Kimberley Aitken

Owner of Nutmeg, Louie, Tripod, Una and Sounder, Wife of Kevin and Mother of Oskar and Angus.