Green Mountain Animal Hospital, Ltd.

Last year when our female (middle aged) cat was suddenly very sick they treated us mostly with respect and her with compassion. But they were more interested in the green than anything else and insisted on expensive and unnecessary surgery that did nothing to save her life, but that we are still paying for a year later. The vet who we worked with was very good with her and though we felt that they had taken advantage of us in a time of stress we thought his intentions were honorable (he found a way to help pay for some medication so that she would be in less pain for the last week of her life since we were broke after paying for the surgery). He might have been honorable, but we do not believe the others in his office or the office policy is honorable.



I don't know if vets take the Hippocratic Oath but if they do this office is in serious violation of it.



This past week our otherwise healthy middle aged male cat hadn't gone to the bathroom in 5 days and wasn't eating or drinking so I took him in to see the doctor. I was very clear that he had been impacted about a month earlier but had managed to clear it himself and what all his symptoms were. They decided right away that he wasn't impacted (how I do not know, they didnt really do an abdominal exam the tech took his temp and said she didn't feel anything in there) and that he must have some internal issue and gave him VERY expensive bloodwork and sent him home with special food. He did eat some of the special food the first day but as the subsequent days went by he wasnt any better. The bloodwork showed everything to be normal, but he wasnt able to poop or eat or drink. I talked to the vet repeatedly during this time and she kept pushing that we do xrays. I explained (after they told me the cost) that we couldn't afford the xrays and treatment afterword (it was one or the other) and that we were pretty sure he was impacted. They spent this time trying to convince me that that wasn't the issue that they thought he had ingested something (no idea why they thought this, but an xray most likely wouldnt show that and when I questioned it the question was ignored), and that he had to have xrays before any treatment could be done. At the 11 day mark he got very very sickly looking and I called the vets office again, no one called me back until they had closed for the day. I begged them to treat him and was told by the on call vet (as the vet he had seen earlier and the other vet we have a relationship with there weren't in the office that day) that if we couldn't afford xrays (for our constipated cat) that we should consider putting him down. At this point we were $300 in and they wanted an additional $300 for the xrays and who knows how much for the treatment. I asked if they could try and give him an enema and was told that they didn't want to do unnecessary (and as it turns out much cheaper) treatment (which sounds really silly since they wanted to do unnecessary diagnostics) until they knew what was wrong (because apparently me telling them he hadn't pooped in 11 days wasn't good enough and they couldn't be bothered to examine him thoroughly during our first visit). They let him suffer for 6 extra days, told us we should have him put down, refused to treat and were completely negligent when what our cat needed was a $40 enema.



We got him treated elsewhere.



Needless to say we are looking for a new vet. We understand it is an expensive business, but to extort your patients and their families the way GMAH does, insisting on unnecessary testing/ diagnostics and surgery to jack the cost up without a care for the animal's health or well being. They should be ashamed (and out of business).