About 3pm on Friday, November 10, 2017, we dropped our 23-month-old 5.5 pound Pomeranian Rio off at Posh . . . A Beaston Camp Kennels Resort ("Posh") in Bettendorf, IA. We planned to pick her up about 48 hours later on Sunday after visiting our son in Milwaukee.
At about 11:00am on Sunday, November 12, 2017, a representative of Posh left a voicemail message indicating that we should not be too concerned, but that she was going to take Rio to the emergency vet clinic. We first listened to this message at about 11:30am as we were leaving Milwaukee to return home and immediately returned the call. On that call the Posh representative told us that they were taking Rio to the emergency vet because she had blood in her stool, would not eat and was generally not responding well. We asked her to call us as soon as Rio saw the vet.
Kelly Beaston called us about noon to tell us that Rio passed away just after arriving at the emergency vet. Ms. Beaston started to tell us about the events that preceded Rio's death, but not wanting to have a car accident (Ann was crying uncontrollably and I was stunned), I told her we needed to have some time to deal with the shock of Rio's death and that we would call her back. Ms. Beaston expressed her condolences and said she would await our call.
We called Ms. Beaston back about 45 minutes later.
During the calls with the Posh representative and Ms. Beaston we were told:
* Sometime on Saturday, Rio and another dog were playing and that when it got too rough the handler had to separate them.
* After separating the dogs, the handler and the other staff on duty looked at Rio and determined that she was "only bruised."
* Rio was taken to the employee area where she ate.
* At some point Sunday morning the staff called the Posh representative that had first called us and informed them that Rio had blood in her stool, would not eat and was generally not responsive.
In my discussion with Ms. Beaston, I asked her why Rio was not taken to the vet after the incident or, in the alternative, why we were not called. She indicated that the handler and the other staff on duty decided it was not necessary because while Rio was shaken up a bit, there was no blood, only bruising and that she was able to eat. I also asked about the size and breed of the other dog. Ms. Beaston told us it was a "mixed breed" between 30 and 40 pounds. Note, the Animal Control Officer that investigated this incident told us the other dog was a Pit Bull. The reason we include this is not to suggest a bias against Pit Bulls or to blame this other dog, rather, to point out that we felt misled by Ms. Beaston's answer.
I do not know if it was at the end of this call or if Ms. Beaston called us back a short time later, but she asked whether we wanted her to stay at the emergency vet until we got there so "we could yell at her." I told her we had no intention of yelling at her, that if we had any other questions after seeing Rio's body and talking with the emergency vet team that we would get in touch. Further, we had 60-90 minutes more to travel and saw no purpose in her waiting around. The call concluded with Ms. Beaston repeating that she was sorry.
When we arrived at the emergency vet we met with a vet tech and said our goodbyes. The vet tech indicated that they were uncomfortable with the circumstances surrounding Rio's death so they shaved her sides to document the trauma photographically. We have included those postmortem photos. The emergency vet clinic told us that Ms. Beaston covered the cost of the vet's services but we incurred the cost of her cremation. Posh never even offered us any other compensation for our loss.
In our opinion, Posh should have taken Rio to a vet after the incident. At a minimum, Posh should have called us and allowed us to decide. If they had called us, we would have directed Posh to take Rio either to her regular vet or the emergency vet clinic. While we will never know whether such action would have saved her life, we do know that we could have prevented her prolonged suffering. As saddened as we are that Rio died, we are horrified and angry that she spent the night alone suffering a slow painful death. read more