On Saturday August 5 2006, my wife and I brought our 10-week-old pup Ranger to Gateway Animal Hospital in Glendale, for an examination and to begin the necessary rounds of vaccinations and procedures required to ensure her health and well being. Id been a regular customer of Gateways for several years and knew the hospital and its staff to be caring, professional and dedicated.\r
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Not any more.\r
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Deciding with the attending veterinarian to leave Ranger so that she could have a flea bath in addition to her shots, we returned not even two hours later to pick her up. When we did we were brought into an examination room and informed not by the vet but by another hospital staff member that Ranger had somehow suffered a serious injury and he asked us if she had incurred the wound prior to the arrival at the hospital. When we told her she had been injury-free up to the moment we released her into Gateways care he said he figured as such but that it was a disturbing mystery as to how she could have gotten so hurt.\r
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Alarmed we asked what he meant by hurt and he told us that she had somehow sustained a cut near the base of her tail that required stitches to close. As to how it happened, he could not say anything but that it was pretty bad and that he planned to conduct a thorough investigation to find out if it had been human error or failure of some other sort.\r
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Ranger was brought in to us and we were shocked by her demeanor. The happy and hearty young dog that we had brought in to Gateway for standard treatment had been replaced by a frightened and unhappy pup not at all understanding why it was having to suffer a cone collar to keep her from ripping out the multiple sutures that now laced up the ugly gash at the base of her tail.\r
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As I said Gateway did well by me until this incident but when something as horrible as this happens stitches may mend Ranger but there's nothing that can repair a broken trust.
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