Northway Animal Hospital

Great service and knowledge

This review is not a jab at the technicians or the front desk at all. They have always been kind, patient, and caring. My issue lies entirely with Dr. Patton. Now this is an experience from over a year ago however I finally decided to write it to prevent what I went through with someone else. When we started treating with Patton my cat was diagnosed with diabetes and we began a trial on the drug Synvelgo. After a month on it, no progress but he wasn’t getting worse. We were told “keep doing what you’re doing.” Let me reiterate during this time Patton did not advise us to change his dry food only supplement diabetic wet food. He did not tell us to monitor his glucose at home with a monitor. He was not administered a glucose curve. We were first time diabetic pet owners so while we were naive for not doing further education online we thought we could trust the vet we were shilling hundreds of dollars to a month. 3 months after that our cat had another checkup. He had lost weight. Still no changes in what we were doing. He was telling us use the synvelgo it will help come back in a month. On a Monday checkup with Dr. Simpson, someone we’d never seen before, she was disgusted at our cat’s condition. She was HORRIFIED that Patton had not put our cat on full diabetic diet. She was almost scolding US for our cat being emaciated even though (and not to her knowledge until we told her) it was Patton’s fault. And I can’t fault her! What was happening to our poor cat WAS disgusting. After that appointment Patton called and said he’d like to put our cat on insulin. He didn’t make it to his next appointment. After showing bad signs we rushed him to the emergency vet and my cat was diagnosed with CANCER in the renal area. We explained everything that Patton had advised us to do to take care of our cat and they too were HORRIFIED. They told us our cat that was dying of cancer had essentially also been dealing with untreated diabetes on top of it. It’s why he continued to lose weight. It’s why nothing worked yet Dr. Patton never took more than 3 minutes during a checkup to properly examine everything that was going on. “Maybe there’s an underlying cause but we’ll continue this first.” is what he’d always say. I’m older and wiser now and will do more research and my part to advocate for my animals. I should’ve run when I was told he mainly worked on dogs and only had one other cat with diabetes in his office. That one shortly passed before mine come to find out. If you have dogs maybe Patton is a good fit for you. However, he truly seems disinterested and burnt out. My cat suffered a horrific, painful end because of it. Don’t let that happen to you.

Just the best what else can I say. Been going there for many years and always recommend them.

Let me start by saying the two vets are phenomenal, and the front desk staff is great as well. But the techs are a different story. If you aren’t passionate about animals, you shouldn’t be working with them. I brought my dog in today at 7:30, since Google lists that as the opening time. The front desk told me the vet would arrive at 8:00. At 8:00, still no vet. That’s when a tech, who clearly has an issue with my dogs, said this to me: ‘Since he doesn’t really like us, we won’t be able to get him out of the crate. So you’d need to schedule an appointment, or take him to the emergency vet.’ If you don’t know how to be professional and work well with animals you shouldn’t be a vet tech. My dogs haven’t had any issues with any vets, the only one that they did was the vet techs from this facility.