Wasilla Veterinary Clinic

Our little Snowman kitty has been battling old age and old teeth. Snows has been in repeatedly during the past several months and has seen all the doctors and tech staff! Everyone is loving and kind and often jokes with us while we are there. We ALWAYS get follow up calls from the techs and doctors! I would rather wait then take my kids to the ER! With 5 fur babies there is never a down time in our house!

After reading the personal attack on Beth particularly I had to write a review. We are new to wasilla and have been in to see the vet three times since August. Beth has always been very kind. Maybe you are the one with the problem? As far as the our visits, we have been more than satisfied. They have called to check on our dog to see how she’s doing and made adjustments to her meds over the phone. I will continue to take my animals here.

This clinic was entrusted with the care of our 4 dogs and several cats over a period of close to ten years. It may have been quality care at one time, I suppose they give shots well. Beyond that however as our dogs aged and we brought them in for exams every concern we voiced was ignored. this led to the MIS-​DIAGNOSIS of a tumor as a simple «lipoma» (fatty tumor). So we took our beloved pet home and watched it grow over recent months to the size of a baseball. Finally we found another clinic and the FIRST thing we were told is «that does not LOOK like a lipoma AT ALL». They then proceeded to aspirate fluids… NO FAT CELLS! We will now have this suspicious tumor removed and hopefully if it is cancerous it has not yet spread… however all it would have taken is a little concern and/​or effort on the part of Wasilla Vet Staff to do the same thing MONTHS ago and give our beautiful Australian Cattle Dog who not only wakes me up from nightmares but also would literally kill or die to protect us a decent chance of good quality of life and longer-​term survival. Its not like we were unwilling to pay for the service in fact we paid over a hundred dollars per visit to be blown off one time after another. Treated like I am paranoid or something. How would YOU like to be a 38 lb creature carrying around a tumor the size of a baseball on your belly? These people once seemed caring but now seem cold, ineffective, and just plain a waste of time and money. I mean, I can give my dog shots at home if that’s all I want for medical care! What a bunch of horrible vets we found there last year (well, two of them, to be exact… the young man may actually be worth seeing but one out of three is not good odds).
If you care about your dogs’ quality of life, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE.
In reference to the review about putting a 16 year old dog to sleep: too bad you didn’t try a diffferent clinic. many dogs live past 16. However ours probably has fewer chances thanks to the hurried judgement of Wasilla Vet Clinic staff. Who knows what could have been done? Maybe nothing. But I don’t trust them to make a good call on this and it sounds like they were awfully eager to just get it over with and not even let you finish explaining your reasoning. Whatever… glad someone was satisfied with their «service».

Sadly my 10 yr old dog got sick & I couldn’t get him into the vet that day. He had been battling something for months & I was trying to work with Dr. P with his odd behavior. Long story short is that I took him somewhere else & after a thorough exam we found the root of his problems & a game plan to fix em! A week later I had my old dog back! I really thought that I was going to have to put my guy down before I switched vets! Sad part is that after all those years of going to Wasilla Veterinary clinic & suddenly stoping after having all these major issues going on with my dog, no one has ever called to see if he’s ok! I just thought there was some more compassion then that, at least from the doctors. Oh, we’ll he’s now in good hands now
& the best part is that the new clinic is 10x closer to home!
I think I’d give Dr. P another try if the need ever came up.

In the style of my Unilocal friend Brian :
It was way too fast
and
Way too final.
(Edited version as the earlier was way too long and dreary… and more about the dog than the clinic).
Several weeks ago we had to have our beloved Border collie, Geordie, put to sleep. She would have been 16 in December. For the past year the spouse and I had argued over whether it was «time» despite the fact that she’s been totally deaf for several years (that really didn’t matter), going progressively blind and was progressively incontinent. She could not navigate stairs in the past year. Eventually, there came a time when we both agreed it was «time». Geordie took a tumble into a stairwell in our house and dropped about 3 feet. She was fine but shaken. We were shaken. If she had broken a bone she would have suffered until we could have gotten her to the vet (and this place has an emergency line) and then we’d have been forced to put her to sleep. (Look, I can’t spell euthanized so I am using an euphemism instead but I grew up on a farm and am well versed in death of animals and pets of all sorts and I do know «sleep» means dead in this case). So, I made the date. The day came… me, the spouse and kids went to the clinic. The clinic staff made sure we had the last appointment of the day although there seemed to be an ungodly number of stragglers who seemed to be hanging around… we saw Dr. Hilary Petit. She has Border collies too. She put Geordie’s mom to «sleep» a couple of years ago. We got in the room and felt compelled to «explain why». She listened for a few minutes to our fumbling attempts to explain and then stopped us. She told us, «Listen, folks. This dog is beautiful. She is nearly 16 years old and I can tell you that MOST dogs do not make it this long. Her lasting this long and in such beautiful condition is a testament to your treatment and love of her. But she is failing and you are doing the right thing. You don’t need to say another word to me about why this is necessary.» We sighed with relief. We all held onto Geordie as she squirmed on the table. Normally docile, but increasingly agitated in her old age, she fought the shot. That made it hard. Finally she relaxed. I held her head in my hands and looked into her eyes, talking to her the whole time. We all cried so hard it made me think I had made the wrong decision to have the kids watch. We could not stop crying. I heard the laughter in the waiting room stop. I wanted thekids to know that owning pets is for life and life ends and you can’t just go get a pet without thinking that you have to be there for them even in the end. Somehow we made our way to the car and loaded Geordie inside, rolled in a blanket. Dead dogs are awkward to carry. Their heads flop. We buried her at home in a grave my husband had dug out the day before. We cried all day. We made our own headstone for her. I think the total cost of the «shot» was about $ 40. The vet’s words were priceless and we hang onto them to assure ourselves we did «the right thing». Cremation would have cost about $ 200 – 300 dollars.
As an aside, when we lived in Barrow, Gatwick, our cat, got deathly sick, this clinic sent medication to us without having seen Gatwick, knowing there were no vets in Barrow. Not many places do that. The staff is friendly and knowledgeable here and they answer questions and help make common sense decisions about everyday things, not just life and death matters.
Anyways…it was way too fast
and
way too final.
But it’s over. RIP Geordie 12÷23÷93 to 8÷22÷09
Thanks Dr. Petit and staff.