I have nothing but good things to say about Dr. Melissa and the staff at Gentle Doctor. When we first met our Scottish Terrier, his breeder gave us no indication of any problems, and we couldn't tell ... Read More
I have nothing but good things to say about Dr. Melissa and the staff at Gentle Doctor. When we first met our Scottish Terrier, his breeder gave us no indication of any problems, and we couldn't tell either even when we brought him home with us. But it turned out he had a "hole" in the back of his neck, which was extremely painful for him. As he got bigger, skin and hair grew out of the hole and made for a very sad puppy in a lot of pain. We saw a few vets who had never seen anything like that before. Finally, someone was able to guess at what was wrong with our dog - we were moving back and forth from the Northeast and Missouri, so we had those records forwarded ahead to Gentle Doctor, who we hoped would be able to perform the necessary surgery (without too much expense, but the same skill).We got back to Missouri and the first thing we did was bring our Scottie into the vet. With a "tracer" x-ray (they injected dye into the hole and xrayed him), Dr. Melissa was able to confirm a proper diagnose of a neural tube defect, a sinus or hole (very rare and uncommon) which was attached to the base of our dog's skull and exited in the back of his neck. She recommended that we wait until he needed to be neutered to perform the surgery - this way he would only have to be anesthetized once. Reassured, we brought him back to Springfield (where we were attending MSU). We had to have the sinus "plucked" once at another vet to remove all the skin and hair building up in it, causing him more pain. He screamed - yes, dogs can scream - terribly, and peed everywhere in terror. My wife and I were desperately hoping we could make things better for him.A month or two later, we brought him back up for his surgery. Dr. Melissa was able to excise the sinus and scrape our dogs bone to remove all the defective cells. Our dog looked like Frankenstein's monster for awhile with the stitches running up his head, but as he recovered he had an incredible change in personality - up until the surgery he had been in constant pain, especially when that part of his neck was touched. He used to yelp if he even bumped it. Now that it was gone, he was like a completely different dog, more happy, more energy, totally normal. We could pet him properly without worrying about hurting him. If I haven't made this clear, our dog owes his quality of life to Dr. Melissa and Gentle Doctor, and we owe them our peace of mind. She literally solved a mystery that had stumped three other vets (including the ones from a very expensive clinic who wanted to do an MRI on our dog). She did this for much less than it would have cost elsewhere, because she effectively examined the problem and addressed it with her expert knowledge. I highly recommend Dr. Melissa - and if our Scottie could tell you, I'm sure he would too. Read Less