Animal Emergency Hospital on Metral Drive Sucks!

In the beginning of December we made our arrangements to move into the hotel. We also made the very difficult decision to put our 18-year old cat down instead of putting her into boarding. Ash was a Siamese with the most beautiful blue eyes but her health was failing and we didn't want her dying while being boarded so we though it kinder to end her pain and put her to rest.

So on December 4, 2011 we took our 3-1/2 year old Shih-Tzu, Samantha and our 11-year old cat, Salem, over to Gabriella's home. We had all of their food, bedding, cat box and dog toys for them and we put them into the room that Gabriella told us was for them. Samantha thought it was all a great adventure but Salem wasn't too happy about it, but what could we do?

My husband and I both work retail full time, we have three children to raise, my elderly mother to care for and it was Christmas time. We intended to walk Samantha every day and to visit her and Salem as often as possible but life doesn't always cooperate with your plans.

A few days after leaving our cat and dog with Gabriella she called me. I had told her that Samantha was house trained [she was] but she wanted to double check as Sam had had a few accidents in the house and store. I offered to take Sam to the Vet as she wasn't a messy dog but she reassured me and said it was probably just nerves with being in a new place. This seemed a reasonable explanation but I told her if it continued to let me know. She never called me again about it and I honestly didn't think anymore about it as I had so much more going on with living in the hotel and trying to juggle kids, work and Christmas.

We managed to get Samantha out for a walk every 2 to 3 days, and while she seemed to urinate frequently I really didn't give it much thought as I have had female dogs in the past 'mark' their territory. She appeared to be healthy and full of her usual energy though we did notice she had dropped a bit of weight [which wasn't a bad thing as she was slightly pudgy from being spoiled rotten]

The first time we took Sam out Gabriella told us that Salem [our cat] wasn't eating but she figured it was also because he was in a new environment and scared, but then she added that sometimes when a cat loses their lifelong companion they sometimes die themselves. This should have been my second red flag but I just thought she was being a bit over dramatic and dismissed it, again, due to too many other things on my mind.

We didn't see Salem for a week as we were picking Sam up from the store for walks, but when we finally found the time to coordinate a home visit with Gabriella, it was to discover that Salem wasn't in the room she had set aside for our pets but in their cold laundry room, hiding behind the dryer. She said he had gotten out of the room and hid there and she didn't want to 'traumatize' him further by trying to catch him. Again, it sounded like a reasonable explanation as he is a giant 'fraidy cat so we coaxed him out and got him to eat. The poor cat was cold, dusty and freaked out but again, like an idiot I bought her explanation and told her that if she couldn't get him to eat more to call us and we'd come over again and feed him.

A couple of days later we visited with Salem again and got him to eat more and Gabriella told us he was eating his food at night. We noticed he had lost a bit of weight, but like Sam, he was slightly pudgy so we weren't too concerned.

Christmas was full upon us by now and it was about every three days that we walked Samantha and we didn't get a chance to see Salem again due to scheduling.

I kick myself for being a trusting fool. The first week in to boarding Gabriella talked me into buying her brand of dog food for Sam by showing how greedily Samantha gobbled it up [hindsight: I suspect she gobbled it because she was starving]

On December 23rd [a Friday] we picked Samantha up from Gabriella's house around 3pm [from her boyfriend] and took her for a walk. I noticed she was stopping to pee a lot and seemed to be straining and I suspected that she was dehydrated as Gabriella kept her small house very hot with a wood stove. When we returned Sam to Gabriella's house we asked her to make sure she had plenty of water as she seemed to be having some difficulty and we thought she might not be getting enough to drink. She assured us she would see to it and we left.

Keep in mind this woman has had our dog and cat for almost three weeks now, and in that entire time not once did she mention that Sam was having any issues.

On Christmas Eve, at 3:40pm Gabriella phones me to tell me that she thinks I should take Sam to the Vet as she seemed to be ill, when I finally pinned her down on what the problem was she admitted that Sam was having trouble peeing. We immediately went and picked her up and took her to the Animal Emergency Hospital on Metral Drive. The Vet examined her and couldn't determine what the problem was but managed to express some urine which was blood tinged. She suspected a blockage of some kind but didn't know what, just a lot of speculation, it took her THREE hours to finally decide it was a bladder stone and that she would need emergency surgery to the tune of $1600 - on Christmas Eve! We loved Samantha - a lot. She was my fourth child. She went everywhere with us. She was family. But with the hotel costs [insurance wouldn't reimburse us until after the claim was finished] and the cost of Christmas, we just didn't have the money. My mother-in-law loaned us the $300 for the emergency Vet visit and we just had no one else to borrow from. The Vet gave Samantha antibiotics and my mother-in-law took her home with her.

We didn't see Samantha or Salem on Christmas day because of family obligations, but as soon as I got off work on Boxing Day we went to Gabriella's to pick up Salem. I was so furious I was afraid that I would get violent with the woman so my husband and oldest daughter went in to get the cat. They collected all of his and Sam's things and we took them over to my mother-in-laws house. We were all shocked out how much weight Salem had lost, his hip bones were very pronounced. He is a big cat, not fat, just very large and when he went to Gabriella's house he weighed 23-lbs, when he left he weighed 17-lbs and none of his biscuits and little of his canned food was touched!

Our cat had never been to my mother-in-laws house before, but when he was placed on the floor, he did not immediately run and hide, he explored, and when food was put before him he immediately ate it, and she has other cats. Draw your own conclusions.

Samantha was still her energetic self, we believed the antibiotics were having an effect but she was still in a lot of discomfort when trying to pee. We wanted nothing more than to take her with us but couldn't and we all felt guilty for it, we all believed she must feel that we had abandoned her. Her played with her and cuddled her but then it was time to go.

Tuesday morning [December 27] Samantha took a turn for the worst, my mother-in-law took her to the Vet in Chase River and with a loan from a friend, had the Vet 'cath' her. The catheter dislodged the stone and she was finally able to pee, the Vet gave her some more antibiotics and special food and told my mother-in-law that Sam had a good chance, I don't know why the Vet at the emergency hospital didn't do the same thing?

Early Wednesday morning Sam went septic, as soon as the Vet opened my mother-in-law rushed her in but there was nothing more they could do. The vet said even if we could have afforded the surgery she was so infected her chances of survival were extremely thin. My mother-in-law did the only humane thing and put Samantha out of her misery. The vet also said, that with the level of her infection she had to have been peeing blood for up to a week before Gabriella notified us. We never noticed because we walked her outdoors but Gabriella had to have been cleaning up her 'accidents' and there's no way she could have 'not noticed' blood in her urine.

I found out at work, it was 10am and I had to go to the hotel and tell my three children that our Samantha was dead. If Gabriella had told us that Sam was still having accidents we would have had a better chance of finding the money to help her. I suspect that she knew if she told us we would have removed Sam for help and she would have lost the insurance company's money. So it was either greed or plain stupidity that kept Gabriella from telling us our dog was sick and Samantha paid with her life.