After a period of illness we found ourselves needing to get our lovely old Black Lab put to sleep on Easter Sunday. We had a care plan in place with our regular vet but as our old fella slipped very quickly over Saturday night/Sunday morning we found ourselves at the mercy of out of hours veterinary care. We tried in vain for someone to come out as it would have been so painful for him to travel in the car but we couldn't get through to anybody that would attend so eventually, after a number of calls, we managed to get him into Vets Now in Brinkley Lane, Colchester late on Sunday evening. We made it very clear how unwell he was and that the drive (a good 45 minutes) would put the dog through a massive amount of pain to get there (he had stitches in his stomach and he was extremely weak and in pain generally from a terminal condition). On arrival he was initially triaged by a nurse in the car park who immediately seemed to question why he needed to be euthanised. It was obvious to anybody that he was already in extreme discomfort but there did not seem to be any urgency with the practice. We did not want to carry him into the waiting room as there were people waiting and we thought our dog would find it distressing with strangers around him so we opted to wait with him in the car until it was time to carry him into the surgery and retain a little bit of his dignity. We did not however realise how long that wait was going to be! Despite us making enquiries a number of times with their reception staff we were left waiting for around two hours in the car park with a dog in terrible pain and distress; dogs were walked in and out of the surgery but nobody came to help our dog. We made a further attempt to find out when our poor dog would be seen and was simply told that they didn't know when he would be seen and the receptionist looked at my wife as if it we were an inconvenience so we took the decision to leave as we were not convinced that he was going to be seen at all. At that point the dog was lying in the back of our car drooling profusely, shaking and struggling for breath. Ultimately our dog had to endure a painful return journey home and a twelve hour wait until another Vet attended our home and put our poor old boy to sleep the following day. The Vet that attended our home said that our dog would have been in accute pain over that period and that is just not acceptable from a supposed "caring profession". Quite frankly both Vets Now and the staff that were on duty on 17/04/22 should hang their heads in utter shame. My family are left now with memories not of the wonderful friend our Lab was but of how he suffered so much in the last hours of his life at the hands of what is the worst Vet's Practice I have ever dealt with. read more