It is a shame that such an exceptional institution allows itself to be represented, at it's front…read moredesk, by an employee so jaded that they come across as irritated by the concern people have for their animal's well-being (aka the very nature of their job)! It should be well within the purview of a medical establishment to offer guidance over the phone to a potential client, only in order to assess the level of urgency in an emergency. I wasn't asking for trade secrets, but when I asked how to monitor my dog going forward, I was hit with a paywall and told it "was a decision I was just going to have to make". Marco's dismissive attitude was insulting and bordered on unethical. I understand not being able to offer a diagnosis without an exam, but to fail to even explain whether or not an exam was necessary, is a dangerously negligent precedent to set.
Last night my dog licked a crushed grape off the kitchen floor, and may have ingested a second one. I read a lot of alarming information online about kidney failure and that even one grape can be extremely toxic. He is 105 lbs and healthy; a toxicity calculator I found on google said that vets generally consider a safe threshold to be 1 grape / 10 kg of a dogs weight. Reassured by this, i continued to monitor my dog. 24 hours later, after escaping the yard and running around the neighborhood, he came home, drank some water, and promptly threw up what looked like nothing but water and a couple blades of grass. This, combined with the fact that I have not seen him urinate since returning home, seemed to justify a call to Dove Lewis.
At 1 am, consulting Google was definitely not helping, made worse by AI's many contradictions and condescending tone, it seemed like a no brainer. Dove Lewis had consistently impressed us in the past with their politeness, expertise, and kindness; truly living up to their identity as a "24/7 non profit emergency veterinary hospital". The times I was unable to pay for an appointment, their staff had always been willing to provide off the record advice, at the very least, to help me assess risk, or simply put my mind at ease. As a result of this, I was always happy to pay the $220 exam fee, when I was financially able.
All of this considered, I was shocked by the callous tone in which Marco answered my most recent call. When I told him I couldn't afford an exam, but was hoping to get some advice, to make sense of what I had read online, he told me he "couldn't give out any medical information over the phone", that "I could try Google", and that essentially, without $220, I wasn't even entitled to a basic level of decency. The last time I was at Dove Lewis, I had paid the full fee and waited 12 hours before being asked if I would be happy to take a rain check on the exam. They basically told me that my dog's injury was going to heal on it's own, and scheduled an appointment for the next day. I live across town and, after spending the entire day prior in their waiting room, I was unable to make the trip downtown the following day. I was hoping the rain check from 2025 might have counted for something, not necessarily an appointment, but sharing a little information over the phone, as it turns out, was still too much to ask.
