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Review content:
Although it has been a few years since I made the mistake of bringing my puppy to Melrose La Brea Animal Hospital for emergency care, my experience was so terrible that my family and I still regularly discuss it to this day, so I felt I should report it. From the looks of it, I was not alone in my negative experience.
I have never, I repeat, NEVER, had a worse experience in my life. I was helping my daughter move into her new apartment in Laurel Canyon. We had a 3-month old Australian Shepherd puppy at the time, so we took him with us rather than leave him alone all day.
Unfortunately, construction on the apartment had only been completed a few days prior, and we didn't notice all the leftover nails lying around the area. Our puppy stepped on one and sliced his paw. He didn't even yelp, but we saw huge drops of blood covering the floor, so we thought we should be safe and take him in to a vet.
Being new to the area, we looked up the closest vet using the yellow pages. I wish we'd had internet access! Dr. Jordan was the most incompetent man I have ever encountered. He put a MUZZLE on a 3-month old puppy because ""you never know what they'll do when they're in pain."" I had been poking, prodding and examining the bloody area for at least 20 minutes and our puppy didn't even notice.
He noticed the muzzle though. He went from calm and sweet to absolutely terrified. Just a quick side-note- I have had several dogs, and none of them, including this one (who is now 3 years old) have EVER needed a muzzle, and I've been to at least 10 other vets. At legitimate veterinary establishments, muzzles are reserved for truly aggressive dogs.
His assistants (he need TWO to hold down a 3-month old, 15 pound puppy) clearly had NO training at all... I'm not exaggerating when I say I think he picks them up at day-labor sites. The entire episode was turning into a circus act, so I stepped in an calmed our puppy down. It was unbelievable (my daughter later said it felt like a prank, or some reality show called ""Punked."") A total joke.
When inspecting the wound, Dr. Jordan couldn't even figure out what was going on. His eyes are so bad he couldn't even see where the blood was coming from, or that there was a HUGE flap of skin that clearly needed to be trimmed off of the paw pad. When he began bandaging the paw, I interjected and suggested we cut off the flap and put some antiseptic ointment on the area first. With a surprised look, he exclaimed, ""Oh, yeah! That would be a good idea.""
Even though I did most of the work and the bill was far too high, we just paid and got out of there as fast as possible.
There was one upside to the whole experience- I learned that if I don't feel comfortable in a doctor's office (pet or human), I have the right to leave at any time. I should have left this place right away. Going here was surreal, to say the least.
DO NOT COME HERE.
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