My roommate and I brought our dogs to AHCD for a stretch of about a year. During that time, one of their vets (Dr Kaitlyn Hart- License #VET.0011072) put my White Swiss Shepherd on Apoquel for what she thought was allergies. My biggest mistake and regret was trusting the vet’s “professional” opinion on the matter. If you do any research on Apoquel, the first thing you find out is that it is a harsh immunosuppressant and can cause some pretty rough side-affects if not properly managed and supervised by your vet. There are plenty horror stories on this drug to be found online. The next thing you’ll find is that the biggest warning is to NEVER give Apoquel to dogs younger than 12 months old. When I first brought my dog in for this issue, she was 8.5 months old (Too young to properly be prescribed Apoquel), and the vet assumed it was allergies without doing any of the proper tests to rule out demodectic mange or other skin issues that could be causing this. Again, I severely regret trusting this vet’s opinion and treatment plan. As the skin condition didn’t really get better, the vet continued to prescribe Apoquel without insisting on bringing her in again to run more tests or try a different course of action, other than she said the “allergies” might be caused by her food. As the months went by, the skin issue only got worse, and my dog’s immune system was severely suppressed to the point where somewhere she picked up parvovirus and it ravaged her body to the point she died on the day she turned 11 months old. In less than 3 months of “treatment” by Dr Hart, my dog went from a 8.5 month old healthy dog with a little skin issue, to dead. This just shouldn’t happen, especially when the vets should not be prescribing drugs that they do not know enough about. Some of you may blame me for not doing the research, but trust me, I blame myself daily for not doing more, and blindly trusting the opinion and direction of an “educated professional” that should be able to read to the insert sheet for a drug that she is freely prescribing to patients.
After the death of my dog, my roommate and I requested all of the care records from AHCD for our dogs, because we obviously wouldn’t be taking them there anymore. This was an issue with them, as they didn’t seem to want to give the information to me, knowing that my dog had just died. I had to call twice and the person I spoke to seemed very wary of why I was requesting this. When we received the documents, my roommate found out that they had been withholding information about her dog’s appointments. They had never raised any issues with my roommate, but the care records said her dog was nervous and had to be muzzled by the vet techs, but none of this had been mentioned to my roommate. Keep in mind this was back in the period where they didn’t allow owners to go in during appointments, which made it convenient for them to treat the dogs however without the owner knowing. This was with the other vet from Dr Hart that they had at the time. You may not think this is serious, but I know I would certainly want to know about these issues so they can be addressed and not cause the dog any further trauma when going to the vet or dealing with other situations.
If you’ve made it this far, and you are thinking to yourself “That’s just your experience with this vet, that won’t be mine”, then go ahead and use this vet at your own risk. With my experience with these two dogs and this vet, I would not recommend this vet to anyone. This vet just doesn’t exude professionalism, and they seem to withhold information that they don’t want to share.
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