Healing Spirit Animal Wellness Ctr

unknown

We brought our dog in who had a high fever and lethargic on a Saturday afternoon when no other vet was available. We told the vet that we had seen him eating salmon on the river bar and had been bitten by ticks. She did several tests including taking a urine sample with a needle. She did not see any signs of the flukes that can be present in salmon poisoning so she prescribed an expensive antibiotic which as it turn out does not treat salmon poisoning. After several days when the dog did not get any better she did an ultra sound $$ and x-rays $$ because she suspected some kind of intestinal blockage. Still several more days go by as our dog gets worse and worse. She told us it might be cancer and was about to do a x-ray test with dye to determine what was wrong. Just as that was getting started one of the technicians found a and quot;flukeand quot; in his stool sample which made the diagnosis of salmon poisoning. The correct antibiotic was prescribed ($10) and the dog recovered in a few days.
We made the mistake of continuing to bring our dog back to this clinic instead of our regular vet because so much testing had been done and we figured she could figure it out. We were wrong. When we related this story to our regular vet they were horrified that a vet in this area would not prescribe an antibiotic that treats salmon poisoning on the first visit after being told that the dog was observed eating salmon on the river. Salmon poisoning is often fatal and we almost lost our dog because this vet was more interested in racking up our bill with diagnostic tests than doing the prudent thing. After a week of terror and expensive bills it was over. We requested a refund for the unnecessary test and she refused stating that all the tests were necessary because no flukes were detected so she did not treat for salmon poisoning. The correct antibiotic is not dangerous and much cheaper than the original one prescribed so there was no good reason not to treat the dog with the right antibiotic to start with. We will never bring any animal to this clinic again.