Sierra Veterinary Specialists

Surgery went as planned, the staff is excellent , you can't ask for a better place to have special surgeries done if your dogs need it.

It was hard to get a hold of Dr Hosking to get an appointment. Once we were there she kept us waiting almost an hour. But let me tell you, SHE IS WORTH THE WAIT! So calm and reassuring. Our normally hard to handle cat almost fell asleep during her Echocardiogram! Dr Hoskings spent over an hour with us. She explained everything she was doing and educated us on our kitty's murmur and mildly enlarged heart. She's expensive but worth every penny! Not at all like the and quot;assembly lineand quot; place we usually go to and that's fine for most things. I realized the reason she kept us waiting was because she was giving the previous patient how ever much time they needed. Just like she did with us!!

unknown

My husband and I are both physicians. We love our 11 year old Pomeranian and want to provide her excellent medical care. She needed to have a routine dental cleaning. We are new to Reno and were not comfortable having non-dental certified vet techs clean her teeth so after calling around we found that Dr. John Koehm was a vet dentist and he employed apparently the only certified dental technician in the Reno area for dental cleaning. Our dog is in perfect health. She eats well without apparent oral discomfort, is happy, active and had no apparent dental problems other than we could see some plaque. We simply wanted to have her teeth cleaned as we have done every 12-18 months in Kansas City where we lived prior to moving to Reno. In Kansas City we DID have a vet who employed two certified vet dental technicians. We had the usual pre-op blood work done to be sure our dog was healthy and the procedure in Kansas City carried a TOTAL COST of $525 including the drugs, anesthesia etc. The procedures always took about 45 minutes start to finish and her teeth were pearly white and perfect looking afterwards. She was recovered by the next morning.



When we arrived at the Sierra Vet Specialists office on the morning of the procedure our dog was fasting. We were given an and quot;estimateand quot; for the procedure of $1,500 which we felt was extremely expensive but we went ahead since this was the only place in Reno with a certified dental technician. Our dog received pre-anesthesia medications about 8 am after our credit card had been charged a test run of $500. They wanted to be sure we would be paying customers. They took our baby away to do the procedure and we waited. 90 minutes later I went to the desk and asked what in the world was happening. Forty five minutes later (that's over 2 hours of anesthesia already) Dr. Koehm came out and said that in all this time they had just finished assessing our dog but that the dental cleaning had not yet been done. He had some x-rays of her teeth and jaws and told us that 9 (nine) teeth were infected and needed to be extracted.



Dr. Koehm is not a very likable guy. He does NOT inspire confidence and at that point we had absolutely no confidence in him or his clinic since it is very bad medical care to keep an animal....or human under anesthesia any longer than necessary. We told him we wanted our dog to have a dental cleaning and then to wake her up. She had been under anesthesia way too long. We did not want to have 9 teeth pulled in an asymptomatic dog based on the assertions of a doctor who seemed defensive and had no patient (parental) rapport. Dr. Koehm essentially insisted that ethically he could not let our dog leave without performing the dental extractions he recommended so we had little choice but to let him do that. It took another TWO and A HALF hours so she was under anesthesia for over 4.5 hours. Now she has missing front and molar teeth. We were not allowed to leave the clinic until 5 pm....10 1/2 hours after we arrived....and our total bill was $2,500.



Our little girl was very badly beaten up and it took nearly 4 days before she could eat anything. Her mouth and muzzle were badly swollen. Wouldn't you think a clinic like this might take 5 minutes the next day or the day after to call to see how the patient was doing? Not a word.



We are not dentists but we are physicians. In our opinion this was extremely bad veterinary care by a clinic and veterinarian who we have absolutely no faith in. We feel he recommended pulling teeth to increase his reimbursement since he knew we had deep pockets. We doubt that many other families would choose to pay these type of fees for his services. We would NEVER go back even if our dog developed a dental abscess. Taking nearly 5 hours to do an assessment, tooth extraction and dental cleaning is outrageous and so were his fees.



Go visit John Koehm, DVM alleged dental expert at your and your dogs peril.