Thursday, March 29, 2012

Careful believing what you read on the internet

This will tickle my readers, I'm sure. It was an excellent reminder of why you should take internet reviews of services with a grain of salt. Heck, with LESS than a grain of salt.

A couple of weekends ago, a woman presented her dog after being hit by a car. The dog was stable, but she couldn't use one leg, and she was in a great deal of pain. My colleague recommended xrays, a little bit of bloodwork to assess for internal injury and bleeding, and the like.

The owner flatly refused, called us money-grubbers, and took her dog home without anything further.

About 24 hours later, she called back (I was on shift). She told the receptionist that her dog had not urinated in a full 24 hours. She was also "in a lot of pain" and wouldn't rise. At that point, my receptionist strongly urged the woman to bring the dog in, as it sounded serious. The owner refused. She then demanded to know what she could treat her dog with OTC for pain. My receptionist again told her to bring the dog in, that she could not make OTC recommendations. The owner then flew off the handle, accusing us of being monsters and stealing. She went on and on until finally my receptionist hung up on her.

The following day, she posted a gigantic rant on our FB page - calling us twisted monsters and threatening to bring us down. Asking how we dared to state we care about animals when clearly all we want to do is steal from people?

You know what this woman did next? She took her animal to one of our shareholder clinics down the road...AND SHE ABANDONED IT. Yep, dumped the injured dog on the doorstep and never came back.

And we're the twisted monsters?

5 comments:

Elizabeth said...

I can't believe she would do that! Her poor dog is in pain and trusts the woman to help and the woman abandons the dog?! I don't know how you don't lose faith in humanity.

Chris Bern, DVM said...

*sigh* I wish the average client knew just how often we have to deal with people like this. I'm sure you've seen my own rants on this topic on my blog. It's frustrating when we know what needs to be done, we can't keep our doors open if we give away services for free, and the client gets mad at US for doing the right thing.

Holly said...

*zzzziiiippppp*

mumble mumble

people make me nutz

Kristen said...

Can't she be charged with animal cruelty for failing to treat her injured dog for two days?! Monster is right. May karma revisit her threefold.

Karen Whiddon said...

Seriously? People should not have pets if they can't afford to take care of them. And because of her, this dog had to suffer and no doubt was euthanized. Plus, she actually dared to belittle you guys on the internet because you were trying to HELP? ARRRRGH.