Customer ReviewsforSouth Bay Animal Hospital & Pet Resort

Our 1-year-old cat with jaundice and lethargy was brought into South Bay Animal Hospital at *************************************, where **. ********* *** works. The cat developed these symptoms one week after vaccination and treatment with de-worming medication, and I asked whether drug toxicity-related hepatitis is a possibility. **. *** asked for a $2000 deposit and charged over $1700 for evaluation, blood tests, and x-ray. Subcutaneous fluid was included in the quote. Four hours later, she called me to inform me the liver function tests were abnormal and recommended additional tests. She was unable to provide an adequate differential diagnosis but said the cat either has fatty liver disease (potentially due to not eating or drinking for days) or lymphoma. She indicated that someone who can perform ultrasound is there and insisted repeatedly that the cat should have this test which costs $1000. Given the cat was lethargic and dehydrated, I asked whether she had given the cat fluids, and she said she hadn't. This was 4.5 hours after the cat was brought in for lethargy and jaundice, which is exacerbated by dehydration. I was concern about **. ***'s medical judgment and incompetence and decided to take the cat away since I did not trust anything she said. She then recommended that I purchase an appetite stimulant mirtazapine. I quickly searched on the internet and found out that this drug is cleared by the liver, which can lead to toxicity in animal with liver failure. At that point, she recommended that the cat be admitted. When I picked up the cat, **. *** did not come out to talk to me. She sent a technician who brought the cat out and asked me to sign an AMA (against medical advice). I took the cat home, and he was eating and drinking and didn't require any treatment. In sum, **. ***'s failure to perform appropriate basic veterinary medical care, incompetence, and unprofessionalism raised serious concerns regarding her ability to practice as a veterinarian.

The staff at SBAH misdiagnosed my dog's tooth abscess as a "piece of bone sticking out of his face," and were disorganized, uncommunicative and unprofessional during my entire experience with them. I took my dog Scooby to SBAH after noticing a growing lump on his snout that appeared to be a tooth root abscess. I made an appointment for 11am, and was told they would have time to do both the physical examination as well as any necessary dental work. At about noon, I got a call saying they didn't have time to look at Scooby after all, and that I needed to come pick him up. They said I would need to come back the next day at 6am, and assured me that they would be able to do any necessary procedures that day. I dropped Scooby off at 6am the next day, where they did a CT scan to find out what was causing the lump. I got a call at 10am saying that they wouldn't get the CT results back for 24 hours. I was taken aback, since it was not communicated to me beforehand that the CT results would not be immediate. They asked me if I wanted his teeth cleaned while he was already there, and that they would look for signs of abscess while he was under. They ended up pulling 2 teeth that day, neither of which had anything to do with the lump on Scooby's face. At this point we had paid $3,020 and had not gotten any closer to the root of the issue. The next day on the phone, the vet said that the CT results were still not ready. She was very dismissive of the lump and said it was likely a piece of bone (her words were a "bony prominence"), or that he had probably hit his face at some point and it was just a swollen bruised bump. I was very skeptical of her diagnosis, since Scooby is rarely ever out of our sight and we would have noticed if he had hit his face. It also seemed very strange and unlikely to me that he would grow a new piece of bone in his face all of a sudden. (On a weird side note, we also got a call from one of the vet techs, who we had never spoken to before, saying that the lump was probably caused by a "splinter or foxtail." This made us even more doubtful of SBAH's competence). 4 days later, after multiple frustrated calls, we finally got the CT results back. And guess what? It was an abscessed tooth root. Now Scooby needed to go back for a second surgery to have the problem tooth removed. Scooby was very traumatized by the first surgery, and I was extremely upset that they had missed the issue the first time around, forcing him to go through the experience again. Finally, SBAH removed the rotten tooth and drained the abscess, and sent Scooby home with antibiotics. 2 weeks later, they called me saying they had forgotten to charge me for the second surgery, and that I owed $1,650. I was shocked, as I had assumed they didn't charge me out of embarrassment and an attempt at restoring goodwill after having so completely botched Scooby's diagnosis. All in all, it took 3 appointments and $4,670 for SBAH to correctly diagnose and treat what had taken me a 5 minute google search to recognize. I highly suggest taking your pet elsewhere for their medical care.