There was a time when I would never have dreamed of going to a different animal clinic. I loved St. B's. There were two vets in particular with whom I had established a close relationship. Both of them are gone now for reasons which I am not at liberty to discuss.
I have an older kitty whose diabetes was in remission or had simply gone away. (It was the two above mentioned veterinarians who treated her back to health). Recently she developed some sort of skin infection on her tummy. One young vet treated her and would not give her a cortisone shot for the itching (because of the history of diabetes), but rather gave her oral meds and a topical spray to try to help the problem. When I took her back for a recheck, the young lady vet followed along with the first vet, but left the exam room to check with Dr. Whitford about the cat's problem. He came in and completely disregarded what had been done previously. He put her on a 'high powered' antibiotics and gave her that first cortisone shot - for itching.
She seemed to get better for a couple of days, but within a week she was back to bleeding from a badly bruised-looking belly- after she licked the area because of the itching. Her skin had beome tissue thin and blood was pooling right beneath the surface.
I took her back to Dr. Whitford who tried to dismiss the problem by telling me she was allergic to fleas. I had treated all the cats with Frontline, and used a flea comb on them, and could not find evidence of any fleas.
On my last visit up there, Whitford tried brushing her fur to get 'flea dirt' off of her, and found a couple of little black specks - which did resemble flea dirt. He moistened a q-tip and tried to prove it was flea dirt. Flea dirt will look red (from blood the fleas suck off the animal) when moistened. Neither black dot turn red. Whitford insisted they did and told me I had a flea problem.
Having tired of Whitford's 'diagnosis' (no blood work had been done on my cat to determine whether she had any infection going on), and seeing no improvement after his prescription of another round of antibiotics and a second cortisone shot, I decided to look for one of the vets who had left.
I found her and, because of the two cortisone shots Whitford gave my cat, the diabetes has returned; there is no allergice reaction to fleas (because there are no fleas); and the problem has deteriorated to a serious problem. My 'new' vet is taking excellent care of her having taken her home for the weekend to watch her carefully. Of course, now she has to have insulin shots.
I would not take anything back to that clinic as long as it is under Whitford's supervision/ownership. His sloppy care of my cat is evidence of a dereliction of his responsibility as a credible veterinarian. He is arrogant and self-absorbed, intimidating and narrow-minded. The decline of the clinic is so very, very sad. As I said above, I used to brag about the clinic and refer friends to it. I'm sorry for that now. If i could give less than one star, I would.
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