Complaint Review: California Veterinary Specialists

Butchers. That's the best way to describe this "hospital". They butchered my (Then) 6 year old Male Dalmatian. Its a long, long story spanning from 2007 to now, but the bottom line is Dr Dhupa is a liar.

He told us he performed the (3) spinal fusion surgeries when in fact I found out (from an employee...who let it slip)...that an intern did it.

So what happened?? We got him home and he started coughing badly for hours...then started coughing blood. We took him back, they looked at him and told us to give it a few days, he'll be fine.

He got worse. We took him to another Vet closer to home, they scoped his trachea and found 4 steel pins had punctured his trachea! They forgot to cut down the 4 pins that were used to fuse the bone together!

That Vet told us to rush him to CVS immediately. We did, they didn't believe us until they scoped him. Then, they rushed him into surgery to cut the pins down and try to repair the torn and mangled trachea. He was there 2 weeks after that surgery.

Now here's the almost unbelievable part: THEY WANTED 6000.00 DOLLARS MORE....FOR THEIR MISTAKE!!!! THEY WOULD NOT RELEASE HIM UNTIL WE PAID!!

So after paying now over 12,000 dollars and a lot of arguing, we got him home.

But Dr Dhupa said something very interesting as we left.......he said, and I quote, "We have never lost a case in court"

We never talked about litigation at any time to them, so where did that come from?? Fear. He knew he screwed up badly.

It gets worse. He was still coughing, not as bad, but still bad enough to be concerned. Then the most bizarre thing happened....my dog started to swell up like a balloon, his entire body. He was huge! And it felt like air was trapped in him.

Rushed again to CVS, they said they knew what it was and not to worry. They scoped his trachea again and found part of the torn trachea was leaking air into his body (Subcutaneously) so when he breathed out, some air was pushed into his body but during inhaling the leaking skin acted like a one way valve and closed up not allowing the air to escape.

He suffered another week in their hospital, nearly twice his normal size because of this. They called us to come pick him up and let the swelling subside on its own, but then the unimaginable happened:

THEY WANTED ANOTHER 7000.00 DOLLARS....FOR THEIR MISTAKE....

I told them to bring my dog out to me now, or I will go get him and nobody will stop me. They did. We left. Once home, after several day, he was still swollen with sub-q air under his skin. Another vet told us we could use small 22 Gage needles to "Bleed" the air from under my dogs skin. We did that for several hours until he was somewhat normal...... 

People, I could not make this story up if I tried. I have the trachea scope on video from the other vet to prove it...and, of course, all the paperwork from CVS....

We found a brilliant Neurosurgeon in Tustin, CA. who, after reviewing the MRI he did,  was willing to take this case on and thank GOD he did because the original spinal injury surgery CVS did was a FAILURE.

He went in and fixed as much damage CVS had done as he could but stated "It looks like raw hamburger meat everywhere" inside him.Took him home and spent thousands on physical therapy, and water PT as well. He returned to about 50% of what he was before CVS butchered him but at least we had him.

My Wife and I are total dog lovers so we were willing to spend our retirement savings on him because he is the sweetest, most loving dog we have ever met. He was a rescue (as are all our animals).

 He is nearing the end of his life as he is having a hard time walking now. The latest MRI shows the surgery site that the CVS intern butchered is starting to fail despite every type of supplement, acupuncture, holistic method we tried.

I hate you CVS. You robbed us of our puppy's health and our savings (About $20,000 to them and over $10,000 to the other vet and PT/MRI services). The other bad reviews were no surprise to us.  

People, please, if you love your dog as we do, go anywhere but this meat butchering house called CVS.