Animal Medical Center Hesperia Poor Veterinary care killed our dog Hesperia California

My small dog got out of the yard and was attached by another dog or coyote Tuesday, April 14^th 2015 night. We rushed her in to AMC  got there at 715pm and she was brought straight to the back by a front desk girl, I told her she was attacked and breathing abnormal, lots of punctures all over and a very large laceration on her rear leg. Word for word that is what I said - none of that is written on medical notes.  She came right back to tell me that it will be $500 for an emergency exam and blood work and xrays etc..

Ive been in the vet field for 9 years so I have been around long enough to know what needed to be done right now: exam, pain inj and xrays. I explained this and she told me she would let the doctor know to start here. I advised her if  there was a puncture into the chest that we would not want her to suffer and we would euthanize.

10 min later I met with the Dr.H and he told me that she also needed IV fluids to treat her shock before they did xrays, and that she looked ok otherwise and as long as the xrays had no protruding punctures into her chest that she would have her laceration(cut) and small skin punctures repaired that same evening. We felt okay knowing that he seemed to know what he was doing, and he was confident that she would be okay. We signed an estimate and left a $500 deposit for 24 hours of care and the laceration surgery with medications to go home.

I called the next morning, Wednesday, April 15th at 8 am and asked the front desk how my dog was recovering from surgery. She told me that they "got too busy" last night to do her surgery and that she would be done later, call them back at 5pm. I asked for a doctor to call be back with an update, at this point I’m a little angry that she sat there all night without care, and it is a different doctor on staff than the night prior that I haven’t heard from.

My husband, Ray Celiceo gets a phone call at 830 am that our dog is under anesthesia and is not breathing! They told him it would be $1500 additional for a chest tube and for them to attempt to get her breathing again. They attempted CPR but were unable to save her. 855am she was pronounced dead, they called and asked if we wanted to come see her and told us they would get her ready. We got to the hospital and sat in the waiting room for the doctor so we can hear the reason for her dying. The tech carries my deceased dog in a white trash bag to me while I am in the waiting room. Talk about cold and heartless - they treated her like she was trash and did not care about our feelings. You want to mourn and grieve in private, especially when you are just getting news of your dog dying under their care.

The doctor explains to me that while he was in surgery he started cutting tissue from her chest puncture and "noticed" that it cut into her chest cavity and her lung collapsed. Our dog died from pure negligence and poor veterinary care. If the skin punctures were protruding into her chest cavity - this would have been seen on xray. You can see free fluid and free air on xrays. The doctors mistake cost us our dog.

To top it off they asked us to pay a balance, and justified this by saying they didnt charge us for "lots of things." My dog may be alive today if I chose a better hospital. Stay away from them, they do not know what they are doing and no other pet should suffer like ours did.