All American City Vet Hospital

Never again.. I have taken my animals to see Dr. Heaton for 16 years. He was amazing, the staff were always so nice, and they seemed to take really, really excellent care of our pets. However, in the last year I had taken my 9 year old pomerainian to have a suspicious limp looked at no less than 3 times. Everytime we went in we were brushed off without an xray or a real exam; saying that my dog was overweight, and when he lost the weight he'd lose the limp.

Eventually he did lose the weight, and the limp persisted. The day after Christmas he stopped walking. When I called to make an appointment to find out what is wrong with him the staff were cold and rude, Dr. Heaton's fill in vet was in (a brusque imbecile worthy of his own review) and wouldn't be able to see him until later in the afternoon. Finally, after calling around we ended up taking him into an emergency vet at Loomis Basin Vet Hospital where we learned my dog has cancer in his hind leg, so bad that the bones there are so brittle they broke sometime in the last few days.

Now I am faced with the terrible decision of how to deal with this. He will need to have his leg amputated, and hope the cancer hasn't spread. That will involve months of rehabilitation and pain management that he may not survive, and I can't really afford.

I can't help but think, that if he had examined him more throughly, or taken an xray even once, we may have caught this sooner. Maybe before the break, and bone loss so he could keep the leg.

They didn't give him cancer, by any means, but they also did nothing to look for any ailment either.…