North Hills Animal Clinic

Last week, my dog got into a bit of a scuffle and we ended up having to take her to vet. Let me start off by saying that if anything requiring a visit to the vet happens between noon on Saturday and 8 a.m. on Monday, an after hours vet is your only option. Thankfully, there's one on Smokey Lane that's open the entire weekend. This is where we ended up.

I was afraid that the visit was going to cost an arm and a leg, but after the doctor had examined my dog and talked about what she recommended doing, they wrote it all up and let us determine which of the optional treatments we wanted to do. We crossed a couple of the items off the list to keep costs down, but paid to have her sedated, stitched up, and sent home with some antibiotics and pain pills. It ended up costing about $275 for the whole ordeal. I figure the only thing that would have been cheaper at our regular vet would have been the visit fee. For a visit requiring an examination, most vets I've been to charge around $35 whereas the after-hours clinic charged $69. I figure the extra $35 was worth the trouble of being able to get it taken care of right away. I think that the after hours visit fee doubles after midnight, so I'm at least glad we were able to avoid that.

My dog spent most of the evening sleeping off the medicine, but at 2 o'clock in the morning, I woke up to the sound of her moving around more than normal. I got up to check it out and she'd managed to remove the stitches. Her wound was now completely open again, so I begrudgingly drove back up the clinic, fearing the charges that might be incurred. I called ahead and the doctor was waiting when I got there. They stitched her back up, sent us home with an e-collar (aka "cone") and only charged us $28. I don't even know what the $28 was for, but was just excited the fee didn't include a staggering charge for dragging the doctor out of bed.

Let me just pause here to say that my dog did do well with the e-collar at first. Initially, she refused to walk anywhere. She hadn't yet figured out to keep her head elevated, so the front of the cone kept dragging on the carpet and she didn't know what was going on. I'd also find her standing still staring at walls, for what reason I don't know. After a couple of days though, she was running around the yard and jumping up on the bed like nothing was going on.

They told us at the after hours clinic to take our dog to her regular vet after a certain number of days to have the stitches removed. About a year and a half ago, North Hills Animal Clinic became our new "regular" vet. We switched from another vet when I found out that I had to have an updated rabies shot in order to register the dog with the city. Our vet at the time wanted to charge a $35 visit fee in order to give the dog a $15 shot that would take less than a minute to administer. So I called around and North Hills Animal Clinic had no problem just charging us for the shot. We've been going there ever since.

When we went to N. Hills Animal Clinic to have the stitches removed, we saw Dr. Willman. She got all the information on what had happened and what treatment had already been done, then she took the stitches out and sent us home with some more pain pills to help with any inflammation. I was probably in the office for at least 20 minutes, and we even spent some time talking about tick treatment. In the end, in spite of the fact that the visit had lasted a while and they hadn't done the initial work, they didn't charge us anything! Even the pills were a free sample they had. Maybe they don't even charge office visit fees and I just think I keep getting off easy, but whatever the case, I couldn't be happier with them and the way they've taken care of my dog. The office staff is always friendly and helpful, and Dr. Willman is great. She obviously loves her job, loves animals, and knows her stuff. I never want a reason to make a special trip to the vet's office, but for those times it's inevitable, I'm glad to know the staff at North Hills Animal Clinic is there to help.