We dropped our dog off for a 4-day stay & scheduled to have him groomed. We returned from our trip, picked up our dog & took him home. A few hours later my wife noticed that he had an open bleeding wound under his leg. I called the kennel to inform them of the injury knowing it was after business hours. I assumed I would get a return call from them first thing the next morning. Nobody from the kennel returned my call the next day during their first 4 hours of business. I called them again an hour before their scheduled closing time & no answer. I left another message telling them that we would immediately be coming to their kennel to discuss this before they closed for the day & that I was very upset that they had failed to return my call. As we were walking out the door the owner, Jane, called me & claimed there must have been some problem with the phones. I told Jane what we discovered & described our dogs injury to her over the phone. She told me she was a nurse & tried to convince me that it was probably an abscess that had just surfaced or that it was some type of cyst. I told her it looked like a cut from clippers/scissors that more than likely took place while he was getting groomed. It was obvious the wound had been bleeding for a while due to dry blood in the fur near the wound. I told Jane we were on our way. When we got there Jane brought the groomer out & they both looked at the wound & gasped. The groomer never spoke a word about whether or not she had noticed the wound while she was grooming him or if she remembered possibly cutting him. Jane told my wife that her opinion as a nurse was that we should just put gold bond powder on the cut. My wife asked Jane if she was a vet & she said no. My wife told her we wanted to get an opinion from a vet & that she expected Jane to pay for the exam given the circumstances; the injury occurred at her kennel while our dog was under her care & the injury happened at the hands of one of her employees. Jane claimed that it wasnt her responsibility & INSISTED that she should not be held liable for the injury to our dog while he was under her care. Jane said she was under the impression we came to the kennel to seek her medical opinion as a nurse. We told Jane that we wanted a vet to see our dog, not a nurse. Jane recommended a vet, but he was unable to see our dog that day. We told her we didnt want to wait until Monday due to the possibility of infection. We told Jane that we wanted to take our dog to a 24 hour emergency hospital since it was the only place open & Jane said no way, that will be too expensive! My wife told her it would be less expensive than paying for the bill if our dogs injury became infected & more serious by putting the vet visit off. At this point Jane started making more excuses saying that she couldnt make a decision like that & that her husband makes financial decisions. My wife told her we would gladly wait. She left for a while & when she returned she finally reluctantly agreed to pay the vet bill. Even though Jane reluctantly agreed to pay the vet bill, she refused to accept responsibility for what happened. When she called the pet hospital to set up paying she told them that our dog had a sore. The vet that examined our dog confirmed that the injury was indeed a cut & that it was not an abscess or a cyst. We told the vet about Janes recommendation to put gold bond powder on the wound & she said that applying it would have not have been a good treatment for a dog. I would NEVER recommend Northwest Kennels to anyone. Jane is an irresponsible & uncaring individual who is the last person on earth that should be running a kennel. She proved to us that not only does she not care about the well being of the animals that people are paying her to care for, but that she also does not feel that she is responsible for anything that might happen to the animals while in her care at the hands of her employees. Stay away from Northwest Kennels!
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