I am writing to inform you of a situation I experienced at Rehm Animal
Clinic this past weekend. It was extremely upsetting to me and I hope that
this letter might draw attention to an inattentive staff in hopes that
nobody else will have a similar experience.

Sunday afternoon, my husband and I were out in our yard working. My husband
had put out fly bait in our horse pasture and brought the container back up
to the house. While we were still out in the yard, my 1½ year old husky
dragged the container down off of the table it was on and started chewing on
it. When we came up to the house, we noticed that she was sick. She was
salivating excessively and was walking in a disoriented fashion. She was
having trouble standing up. We immediately brought her inside and called our
vet (Theodore Veterinary Hospital). The message on their answering machine
gave us two phone numbers to call, and instructed us to call the second
phone number if we did not receive a return call from the first number
within ten minutes. I called the first number, but did not receive a call
back and called the second number. This number was for Rehm Animal Hospital
Emergency Clinic.

The woman that answered told me that there was a vet there and to bring
Stella in. We loaded Stella up and, because I was in such a panic, I
completely forgot that we were supposed to be taking her to Rehm and not to
Theodore. While we had her in the car, I called the phone number and told
them what type of poison she had gotten into in hopes that it would help the
staff prepare. The woman on the phone told me that when we got there, she
would give us the phone number to poison control and that poison control
would tell us what we needed to do. When we arrived at Theodore Veterinary
Hospital we called the number back and realized that we were at the wrong
place, so we were finally on our way to Rehm.
Once we arrived at Rehm, we managed to get Stella out of the car and to the
door. There is a sign that says to knock or ring the bell. We did both.
We waited outside with our very sick dog for five minutes and nobody came to
the door. Finally the door opened, yet it was not an employee that opened
it, but another pet owner that heard us knocking form the waiting room that
she was in. We then waited in the hall another five minutes before a vet
tech finally saw us and put us in a room. Once we were in a room, she gave
us paperwork to fill out and the phone number to poison control. My husband
called the poison control center and I filled out the paperwork, all the
while, my dog is foaming at the mouth and stumbling around the room. The
poison control center told my husband that the vet needed to give her
atropine, but they would not give out any more information to him: the y
would only talk to the vet. Fifteen minutes later, the vet tech came in and
asked my husband what poison control had told him. He told her that the vet
would have to call because they wouldn’t give the information to him. She
went away and about ten minutes later, a different vet tech came to get her
temperature and weight and brought her back in the room. In the middle of
all of this waiting, she had diarrhea in the room and we did what we could
to clean it up. Stella was also still salivating so much that she was
slipping on the floor because it was so wet from her saliva. Finally, 45
minutes after we arrived at the Emergency Clinic, the vet came in to talk to
us. She only looked at Stella to quickly check her heartbeat. She told us
what type of poison Stella had ingested and said that we could treat her
symptoms with IV fluids, atropine, and activated charcoal. She then left us
while she had a quote worked up. In this time, Stella’s walking had
improved and her salivating had almost completely stopped. We discussed the
treatment options and decided that we were not going to treat her since she
appeared have almost completely recovered.

When yet a different vet tech returned with the quote, we told her that we
weren’t going to treat her. I was quite irritated after the treatment that
we had received, or rather, the treatment we had not received. I told her
that we were quite upset that we were left to wait for so long with no idea
of what was going on while we thought that our dog was dying. She told me
that she would need to have me sign a form stating that we were leaving AMA
(against medical advice). As this vet tech walked out of the room, she
slammed the door. That was the final straw. I was very annoyed before, but
this technician slamming the door in our faces was more than I could take.
I opened that door and leaned in and told her that we were leaving and that
they could send us the bill. She came running after us and yelled at us
that she would call the police and that it was theft of services. I
overreacted at this point and told her to go ahead and call the police. I
immediately realized that calling the police was not going to achieve
anything and told her that I would pay the bill, but that I didn’t want to
wait another ten or fifteen minutes for them to finally get it taken care
of. While she was getting us checked out, she made the statement that she
had only just arrived at work. I then told her, again, that I was upset
because for the last hour and a half, I had thought that my dog was dying
and that no one there seemed to care. She then told me that Rehm is just
like any other emergency room at a hospital. With that, we paid our bill and
went home. As we arrived at our house, the poison control center called us
to check on Stella. They said that they had talked to the vet and that they
didn’t want to get in the middle of anything, but that their main concern
was with the dog. Apparently the staff at Rehm Animal Clinic told poison
control that there was a problem with us at the clinic. It is none of
poison control’s business what happened while between us and the staff and
we felt like we were being slandered by the staff of Rehm Emergency Clinic.
It is amazing, though; that the only people that cared about our dog in the
end, were the people at the poison control center. Stella is at home now and
is doing fine. She was thirsty and hungry, but otherwise, everything is
back to normal.

I would like to say that I certainly hope that Rehm Emergency Clinic is not
like any other emergency room at a hospital. If my child were foaming at
the mouth and stumbling around after ingesting poison, I hope that the
emergency room would jump on the situation or at least let us have some kind
of clue as to what is happening. At the very least, I would expect that
they would call the poison control center and find out how to proceed with
treatment. I have never before been treated with such indifference from a
veterinarian and their staff before. We were humiliated and treated like
criminals. The staff of Rehm Emergency Clinic may have felt like we
overreacted, but for them, it was just another day at work, while for us, we
felt as if we were watching a loved one die. I hope that this letter might
open some eyes to the fact that pets and their owners deserve to be treated
respectfully by staff and that the owners should not be left in the dark
about their pet’s condition.