My 8 mo old male golden retriever was seen for a semi emergent urethral prolapse on 05/18. Before his procedure, they vaccinated him, not just for rabies, but also distemper (the combo shot DHPP) WITHOUT MY CONSENT. No one said a word to me about vaccines until we picked him up and Dr. Shelley casually informed us he was vaccinated. I immediately let her know I didn't consent and that I was upset. She left to double check that her paperwork was right and came back and apologized for the "misunderstanding" and said we wouldn't be charged. She said rabies is required to protect her staff (it's conventional knowledge that you don't mount an immune response that fast and no rabies shot was going to protect them if he came into their clinic already infected), but then also tried to gaslight us saying they squeezed him in on short notice and had no records. (They did have records that they requested from our local vet and they also asked me about his vaccine status via text on our 2 hour drive to their clinic.) You don't vaccinate sick animals, it says so right on the insert. My boy was not well. He was very inflamed and his body was already under serious stress. THEN, when his prolapse came back a month later, it took them TWO days to call me back and advise me. I called two mornings in a row and left messages with an actual person. We went with them because they were closer, but ended up having to take him to Billings anyway. Also, do what you want with this, but I feel it's worth mentioning- the doctor in Billings told us the tip of his penis was all dead tissue. It looked exactly the same as it did the first time. What State Ave did would have never worked because it was dead and they told us it wasn't.
They are also extremely overpriced. We paid almost $1,000 for a simple little procedure where they pushed the prolapse back in and did a butterfly stitch. In Billings, they did actual surgery- a resection and a neutering AND he had to spend the night. It was only $1,500. State Ave basically took our money and ran.
Do your best to avoid this clinic. read more