My dog died at the hands of Dr. Sagartz, who appears to be just like any number of vets who put money ahead of care.
My dog had a cyst or tumor under the skin. He was 18 years old. The cyst/tumor ruptured several nights ago - 7/4 - and was bleeding. Couldn't stop it myself - there was a big hole from the rupture - so I took him to the emergency near me, which was McClave. They put in one stitch, sent me home with no E collar, no protection on the wound. It failed on 7/9, and I went BACK to McClave. This time they put in 2 stitches, but no E collar, no covering. He chewed the stitches off in one day, bleeding started again. Went a THIRD time to McClave, at 4AM on 7/10, and this time an older doc REALLY stitched it up, sent me home with E collar and the cyst/tumor stopped bleeding, the stitches held and it was scabbing over. NOW, the first two docs INSISTED that, "This needs to be excised. It's the only solution", which was nonsense. YES, to permanently get rid of it, surgery was the answer. But is it the answer for an 18-19 year-old dog? I would leave that up to my regular vet, Dr. Martin at Parkview.
ONLY DOC MARTIN RETIRED COUPLA WEEKS GO!!!
So, I go anyway and see the vet who bought the practice. Now, I just want to keep the bleeding stopped. The last set of stitches have been doing the job, and the new guy at Parkview, Dr. Sagartz, is probing it, squeezing it...and nothing is oozing out, the stitches hold. BUT, he says, it should come off, and he can do it without general anesthesia and just use a local. Besides, he says, my boy is a "good boy" and should be able to handle it, which I guess he surmised by my dog's silence when he was probing the stitches already there. AND, lucky me, Dr. Sagartz happens to have a break so he can do the surgery right now, and I should come back in an hour or so.
I do. My dog is handed to me with a huge, stitched wound, and I just knew...He was dead in under 3 days. Dr. Sagartz saw a chance to make a quick few hundred bucks on a break. It cost me my dog.
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