On April 20 we lost our sweet girl, Ruca. We took her in to get spayed, a routine procedure for a completely healthy 1.5 year old dog. We dropped her off trusting that she would be treated like what she was, a piece of our hearts, an irreplaceable family member.

We were told to pick her up between 3p and 4p, so my husband showed up at 2:45p, eager to get our girl home where she could rest and recover comfortably. As she walked into the room to be discharged she collapsed on the floor. She was awake, but completely unresponsive to my husband’s presence. Her gums were pale and her body temperature was low. The vet tech asked my husband to wait in the waiting room while she tried to get her body temperature up. It was approx 3p. At 3:14p I got the first text from him, “Ruca doesn’t even know I’m here when I put my hand in front of her”. He knew something wasn’t right, but never imagined the severity of what was happening to her. About an hour later he got the only other update he would get the entire almost 3 hours he sat there waiting. The tech came out and said they were going to do x rays to check for internal bleeding. Those x rays were not taken until after 5p, after she was already dead. When I arrived at 4:40 there was no one aside from my husband to be found in the surgery center. I searched frantically for someone, anyone, to give us an update on what was happening. I went into the back, not a soul around. An empty operating table with vials of medication still sitting on it, bright lights, machines humming, but not a living person or animal in sight. It felt like a horror movie. Finally sometime around 5:30, a young vet tech came to the reception window and told us Ruca didn’t make it. Not the surgeon, not even the lead tech. She just said it right there through the window, in front of my son, like it was nothing. I demanded to speak to the surgeon only to find out the surgeon had not been there since 2:30 that afternoon. To this day we have not heard from the surgeon. From what we were told the surgeon was on the phone giving direction and chose not to return to the facility. We were also told Ruca’s body temperature was 88 degrees when my husband saw her - the records we were given said it was 98. We were told that evening Ruca had a large tumor and that was the reason she didn’t make it. We were told the radiologist report confirmed this. All lies. We went back the next day to pick up her records. The manager offered to have a necropsy done at a “3rd party facility”. We sat for hours waiting for them to get us contact information for that facility or some sort of confirmation of when she would be picked up and where she was being sent. All we could get out of them was a name. For obvious reasons we elected to have our own necropsy done. We made our own arrangements and went back the following day to pick her body up and drive her to the Bronson Animal Diagnostic Lab. When we got to the vet to pick her up the office manager demanded we sign a release. Not only releasing her body but releasing them from all liability. We refused. It took over an hour to get them to allow us to take our dog. All the while insisting she died from underlying causes, although the vet tech herself told us internal bleeding was suspected and every symptom she had was a direct symptom of internal bleeding. When they finally agreed to allow us to take her we were told to pull around back. We watched as a small female vet tech struggled to lift her 110 lb frozen body, wrapped in black garbage bags, out of a deep freezer. My husband stepped in to help. We got her in the car and drove 2 hours to drop her off at the lab for the necropsy to be performed. A man dressed in what I can only describe as a butcher outfit came out to the loading dock, blood on his clothes, and unloaded her from the car. As we drove away, I watched in the rearview as the outer bag ripped while he tried to carry her inside. I don’t know that I will ever be able to get the images from that day out of my head. The nightmares are real.

On top of the unimaginable trauma of the experience, the vet records contradict what we saw with our own eyes and were told by the tech that was actually working on Ruca. The office manager contacted my place of employment trying to get me fired, claiming I manipulated people into leaving comments on their page. The radiology facility that we were told read the report right after it happened confirmed to me that the x rays weren’t even sent to them until the following day, meaning we were told nothing but lies meant to protect the vet center the evening she died.

There are so many more terrible details of this experience I could tell. Bottom line is, this did not need to happen. If the proper follow up care was provided, Ruca would not have bled internally for 6 hours, being provided only fluids and a warming blanket until her body finally could no longer compensate for the massive blood loss. The necropsy report confirms this.

We need help to make sure the people responsible for this are held accountable and that this never happens to another family. Please consider donating to help us fight for justice for Ruca. All funds raised will go toward legal fees.