Mandarin Pet Emergency Hospital review: Veterinary service

On January 3rd, my husband took our dog - pomeranian Fabio — to your clinic since he was clearly in pain and was showing big signs of distress. Upon arriving my husband told the staff that Fabio was given a rib bone to chew on and shortly after he was acting really weird, choking, 'backing up' and showing signs of pain. At some point it became really worrisome, so he decided to take him to your emergency clinic.

The Dr who was on duty then examined Fabio, took an x-ray which didn't show anything, and asked if Fabio jumped anywhere. Fabio doesn't jump and he's very lazy overall, so we considered his question being strange. Anyway, $600 later, Dr assumed that Fabio hurt his back and prescribed painkillers to him.

We thought the diagnosis was odd, but proceeded with the medication which was was taken for about a week, since he was clearly in pain even though he was eating, and drinking. He was still acting weird, afterwards, and has been doing choking sounds almost every day.

We decided to take him to the regular vet for an exam, and surprisingly found out that Fabio had a fractured tooth which was extremely painful to him, and presumably caused all the pain, and choking. The tooth has been removed, Fabio has been fine after that.

Now, I believe that if your Dr examined Fabio's mouth, he would've seen his fractured tooth that's already been very loose - we told him that Fabio chewed on a rib bone, which I guess cracked his tooth that has started to rot out. Therefore, choking and gagging sounds and pain.

I believe that Dr was incompetent, If he looked into Fabio's mouth and saw it, he would have not misdiagnosed him. It looked like since Dr didn't know what was wrong and Fabio couldn't talk and explain what exactly hurt, the diagnosis of 'bad back' was established. I believe that we should be refunded the cost of the visit, except the painkillers, since Fabio did need them, and I believe also that more thorough exams should be performed to avoid similar situations in the future.

I guess taking a look into the pet's mouth and checking all his teeth might not be a common practice for emergency service, but please understand how it looks like to us - we paid totally in vain, no service has been provided except prescribing pain meds, and we got a completely wrong diagnosis.