Pet Nation Veterinary Care Cent

Dr. Nation & the team at Pet Nation are wonderful. We recently adopted a puppy and the poor girl has had too many medical issues to count. From allergies to infections and parasites. Dr. Nation took extra time and care to make sure that we were doing everything we could to keep our poor little girl comfortable and move her on the right path to healing. She even would check in with us (almost daily) to track our pups progress and offer advice to keep her healing... including late after hours and when she was not in the office. I highly recommend Pet Nation and Dr. Nation to anyone looking for a vet who truly cares about their customers and the pets they treat. Thank you Pet Nation!!!

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Our Springer Spaniel, Joey, who was 6 at the time had surgery to repair a partial cruciate ligament tear in his left back leg. He was sent home 24 hours after surgery with no bandaging on his leg, nor any antibiotics and they broke his fibula bone sometime after the surgery and before we picked him up. Joey got a very serious staph infection because he was not put on antibiotics after surgery and the incision was exposed without being bandaged and he had pain from the broken fibula bone. He was in pain for over 4 months and held his surgery leg up for 4 months. We spent an additional $3,500.00 over the $3,144.21 we originally paid Pet Nation with other veterinarians and therapy centers doing various kinds of therapies to help his leg heal so he could walk on it again - it was touch and go. He started on antibiotics through another veterinarian but the infection grew between the plate and his body so in February of 2013, Joey had to go through another surgery to remove the plate. Again, more underwater treadmill therapy and finally acupuncture treatments, he started using his leg in late March of 2013. I would never take a dog to Pet Nation for anything. Dr. Marie Nation only cares about money; her facilities are not what they should be for such serious surgery. She has an attitude when you call her on mistakes. Please don't take your pets to Pet Nation. Our Joey suffered so much and we feel terrible that we took him to Dr. Marie Nation.

Our 8 year old pug had a large lump with surrounding swelling of his face. It came suddenly and was rapidly progressing causing partial closure of his right eye. He was examined, and placed on antibiotics. Dr Tanya Lewis did surgery and found a tooth root abscess present. The tooth was removed , and the abscess pocket cleaned out. Stitches were placed. He also had his teeth cleaned, as long as he was under anesthesia, and had never had them cleaned. Everything went very well, Dr Lewis did a great job! She is very skilled, professional and I have the utmost confidence in her. Our Pug has recovered very nicely!

Excellent overall service. (see above)

I brought our senior cat into Pet Nation for his annual exam and shots. He had gotten out of his gated area during the night and was hunkered down looking guilty and upset when I found him the next morning. He had vomited a few times and I found what I thought was blood tinged saliva near the vomit. I checked Angie's List for recommendations and called to compare prices. Pet Nation is a newer clinic and yet wasn't listed. We recently moved to the area so we needed to find a new vet, and being just a few miles from the house I decided to give them a try. They were able to take him the same day.
The office is small but comfortable, located in the back of a building that houses other small businesses. We arrived and completed paperwork and were then shown to a room. Dr. Lewis came in and performed the exam. She asked about the vomiting and the blood I found. I let her know that I did not see him throw up, so I only assumed that the blood was from the vomiting, but I didn't know what it was from. I checked and didn't see any cuts on him. She suggested that the blood and vomiting might be from an ulcer, and recommended that we do some blood work to see what was going on. She hesitated to give the vaccines before finding out the results of the blood work, but I asked her to go ahead and do them, which she did.
I received a call the next day on my cell phone. I was informed that it wasn't an ulcer, but chronic kidney disease, which was not curable. I was told that he only had about 25% kidney function (she misspoke - his kidney function was reduced by 25%), which floored me. She said that as long as he was eating and using the litter box, the disease could be managed indefinitely by switching his diet to a vet prescription kidney diet and getting more water into his system either through his food or shots under the skin. She said that if he stopped eating or urinating, then we would have to discuss other options. She didn't feel that any x-rays or other tests were needed at this time. I went by later that day to pick up the food she recommended.
The next evening he started whining his and quot;distressedand quot; cry. I petted him and checked to make sure that he had plenty of food and water, and scanned the floor for vomit, but didn't see anything wrong. A little while later I walked into my office and found him trying to urinate in one of his beds. I watched him for a minute and then picked him up, and there was blood spots on the bed but no urine. He ran off into the other room and I caught up with him trying to urinate in one of his other beds, which was covering a large pile of vomit. I picked him up and found more blood. Obviously, this was not an ulcer, and I feared that the kidney disease was more progressed than they thought.
Pet Nation was closed (it was after 10:00 PM) and they didn't have an after-hours number to call for advice, so our only option was to take him into the emergency vet. We arrived there around 11:30 PM. I brought the invoice that had the list of what had been done at Pet Nation. (They never offered to send or give me copies of his test results, so I had nothing to provide to the emergency vet.) The vet asked questions about what had been going on and we spoke about chronic kidney disease. She said they were going to try to collect a urine sample (not done or even suggested at Pet Nation) and take an x-ray to see if there were any other issues, such as kidney stones.
She came back into the room shortly after taking him back to let us know that he had a bad urinary tract infection and she did find what she thought might be small kidney stones on the x-ray, but she was going to wait for a radiologist to review it to make the final determination. We were sent home with antibiotics and a few days of sedative to keep him comfortable. We also received a full printout of his visit notes before we left (and received an updated copy in the mail a couple of days later that included the radiologist's notes).
Total additional cost of my visit to Pet Nation, $441.50. Needless to say, I immediately changed vets (to one recommended on Angie's List). To her credit, Dr. Nation (the owner) called me the next day to check on him, but I had already decided to switch.
The only reason I give Pet Nation a D instead of an F is because I believe if I had walked in and told Dr. Lewis that he had blood in his urine, she would have taken the appropriate action and a lot of stress and extra expense could have been avoided. However, I think this is something that should have occurred to her (where can blood come from - if not somewhere on the body, then it's got to either be from the mouth or the urine/feces).