We came to use SLAH after having just obscenely bad luck with vets all over Austin, as the proud guardians of four dogs. Our gripes went from the trivial--one called our female dog ""him"" on a consistent basis--to the irritating--another was too afraid of our dog to look in his ears. There were worse problems. One vet refused to do anything about a fast-growing 6"" long wart on our young dog's face but didn't refuse to perform a $800 emergency operation when puppy scratched it, and it became infected, and, we were then told, it might be cancer. We got used to being treated with indifference, even negligence, and feeling railroaded into expensive procedures with fear. Things came to a head when our aging terrier went into ketoacidosis (a consequence of extreme diabetes). Our vet did a bunch of tests which obviously showed problems all over the place -- liver dysfunction, ketones in the urine, glucose about as high as a dog has ever survived--basically a dying dog. The message we got was that we needed to approve about $2500 in advance or they would recommend euthanasia.
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