This is a difficult review to write. I'm not typically a really loyal customer, but for a while I was to Hope. They are one of the lowest priced clinics in town, and you get the sense that the staff r... Read More
This is a difficult review to write. I'm not typically a really loyal customer, but for a while I was to Hope. They are one of the lowest priced clinics in town, and you get the sense that the staff really loves animals. There is a sense of family there that might strike some as unprofessional. I always liked it. The chiding of one of the clinic dogs, Ondine, as she went to meet the cats, seemed like home.But of course, you remember the bad experiences most and we recently went through a long one that really hurt Hope in my eyes. We found a stray cat maybe 6 months to a year back. She was tiny and starving, so we took her in just long enough to find her a good home. Any animal lovers out there should have laughed when they read that cause of course she got added to the family, like it or not. She wasn't healthy but she ate like a horse and fattened up in time. Then, the day we finally did have a potential family lined up to come meet her , she got hit by a car and had her hip shattered.My girlfriend took her to Hope and explained the situation - we don't have a lot of money, we're not particularly attached to this cat and she's always been sickly, can she be saved? Doctor gave options of putting her down, amputation, and basically rebuilding her hip. With assurances from the doc as to her general health but not necessarily her chances of walking normally, we moved ahead with the rebuilding process. Big points to the doctor who really worked with us on the price. I've seen similar surgeries cost 4000 but ours was 800 which the doctor then split with us! Very kind of him and make no mistake, definitely appreciated.She had the surgery, which went well, but she never really got better. She healed, she could walk, but she never played again, she quit eating, and she just kept getting sicker. We took her in again and again, always with the caveat that if this animal is terminal, we want to know so we can make a hard decision if we have to. We'd already proven we were not at ALL quick to jump to euthanising an animal but if she was dying why drag it out?They told us she was fine, and then the next visit told us she might have feline AIDs. Those tests came back negative as well. They were never able to give a diagnosis for what had gone wrong but then they told us they knew she'd had problems all along and would probably not make it. WHAT? WE always thought that and no one from Hope was ANYTHING other than reassuring with us. We felt very misled and betrayed at that point. This cat ended up with a miserable last few months of her life, an ever expanding growth in her abdomen that I always felt was her enlarged liver, and at the end she turned completely yellow, proving I was right. She died as a sad, emaciated little thing that we took care of till the end.I know it's not fair to slam a clinic for one bad experience, so I'm still giving them 3 stars and am even giving a cautious recommendation. This may have been a complete fluke and I loved them before it happened! But due to this experience we've moved on and won't be going back. Read Less