Many of us in Manatee County have had wonderful experiences with Bradenton Small Animal Hospital. My own family will appear in Dr. Butler’s records dating back to the 50s. Let me tell you a little abo... Read More
Many of us in Manatee County have had wonderful experiences with Bradenton Small Animal Hospital. My own family will appear in Dr. Butler’s records dating back to the 50s. Let me tell you a little about my most recent experience. This past Monday our beagle, Max, exhibited some discomfort and problems with mobility. Our regular vet was not in the office so our daughter took Max to Bradenton Small Animal Clinic. Soon she was told that Max exhibited the very worst case of dehydration the vet had ever seen. We were told his kidneys and liver were shutting down. We would have to begin emergency procedures to save his life. We were told it would happen again, if we could save him, and that we should consider how we would want to proceed in the future, as it was a costly procedure to repeat over and over.Of course, I immediately paid $639.38 and authorized the procedure. We worried all afternoon about how to tell our grandson that we may have to put his pet down.When Luke and I arrived that evening to transfer him to an overnight facility (another $400), fully expecting to be saying goodbye to Max, I questioned the severe dehydration because Max has adequate water supplies, both indoors and outdoors. And he drinks from them all of the time. At this time we were told that Max wasn’t dehydrated after all. It seems their equipment had malfunctioned. What did the vet tell us? “I guess we should have called you when we discovered the error.” Ya reckon?When I questioned my having to pay for their error, I was told he also had low potassium levels which concerned them. And, apparently, the protocol for saving a critically dehydrated animal, whose kidneys and liver are failing, and treating low potassium levels is the same procedure. When I expressed the distressful afternoon of trying to figure out how to tell our grandson that we may have to put his dog down, this vet smugly told me “Well, I can’t tell you how to talk to your grandson.” I wasn’t asking for parental guidance, I was expressing what we had gone through due to their negligence.To be fair, the vet did offer to refund the $45 for the faulty test, but nothing for the $595 we paid for the protocol resulting from the faulty testing. I told the vet to keep the $45 and buy herself a wonderful Christmas dinner.If a medical doctor does the same thing, it results in a malpractice lawsuit. I feel the Bradenton Small Animal Hospital counts on the fact that most people won’t take several hundred dollars to small claims court. I have not decided the next step. I do know we were treated wrongly and unfairly.I am sure this doesn’t represent all cases at this clinic, but I do feel this case should have been handled differently. We brought Max home the next morning. It took him about 24 hours to recover from the “life saving” treatments he was subjected to in error. Wednesday morning he was back to his old self, like nothing ever happened.I feel that, like many businesses here in Florida, this office doesn’t care what one person thinks about their service, there will always be another customer who has never heard about the flawed service, both professionally and in regards to customer service.We are very grateful that Max is back to normal, but $1140.00 based on a faulty piece of equipment is hard to swallow. Read Less