A VITAL & URGENT WARNING TO PET PARENTS EVERYWHERE

Pet parents everywhere need to understand the fee-charging antics of an institution like Massey and its Companion Animal Hospital. They need to understand the depth of deception of which some veterinarians, and some clinical environments and their management are capable. And they need to understand the potential lethality of the consequences.

Practitioners and establishments like this rely on the fact that we – the non-veterinarian pet owners – won’t have a clue more often than not, what the line items are on the ridiculously inflated invoices we pay. And that we – the devoted pet parents – will use every last cent on our credit cards to buy life-saving treatments for our beloved animals.

But our ignorance and our devotion are – for the likes of Massey Companion Animal Hospital – their opportunity. And especially, their financial opportunity.

I mentioned in my article about the premeditated coerced killing (I refuse to call a wicked and pre-meditated fraud, “euthanasia”) by the vet “Steffi”, that my finding and studying the invoice for Harry’s final “stay” and “care” in Massey’s ICU, was the smoking gun that unveiled the clinical fraud they committed to convince me to let them absolutely unnecessarily end his life..

Well . . . that invoice, as it turned out, was also the most insultingly opportunistic statement imaginable.

The Invoice Indictment: The Paper Trail of a Clinical Betrayal

Let me break it down – clinically and forensically – for those pet owners that have the stomach to see the games that are played with your wallets – or, for most of us, our credit cards.

Stay with me as I walk you through the line items on this invoice . . . an invoice that illustrates in irrefutable clinical and pharmacological detail, the expose I roll out in The Gabapentin Gamble That Didn't Pay Off  & the Cover-Up That Necessitated Death and It Wasn’t ‘Euthanasia’. It Was A Calculated Cover-Up & A Pre-Meditated, Coerced, Clinical Killing  LINK TO ARTICLE.

This invoice isn’t just a “bill”; it’s the metabolic and chronological roadmap of the sheer evil that was perpetrated upon my dear little loving, sweet and innocent (and not at all needing to die) Harry.

The Pharmaceutical Fraud

The invoice confirms the exact two drugs that created the "Pharmaceutical Mask" used to justify Harry's death i.e. the cocktail of sedatives that would be, later that day, used to present him to me as a dog that had “had a neurological event” and “needs to be euthanased TODAY”.

• Maropitant (Prevomax): 0.36ml administered on December 1st.
• Gabapentin (100mg): 2 capsules administered on December 1st.

Both of these drugs – the primary sedative and the potentiation agent - were administered on the morning of the “euthanasia” coercion (read: pre-meditated clinical killing) planned by Steffi, the vet, later that day (just as soon as she could get me back to Massey).



The Smoking Gun: Evidence of Prior Knowledge

The most damning evidence of clinical malpractice is not just what was administered, but when. The invoice proves that on November 30th—the night of Harry’s admission—Massey performed an IDEXX Catalyst Chem17 CLIP and a Massey Bundle Lab Test. These are not "generic" tests; they are high-resolution diagnostic panels specifically designed to evaluate renal (kidney) and hepatic (liver) function.

By the time they reached for the Gabapentin on the morning of December 1st, they were already in possession of the blood data. They knew Harry was a 15-year-old dog with compromised kidneys. Yet, they proceeded to administer a drug that the veterinary community knows is cleared almost exclusively by the kidneys.



This was not a "blind" administration; it was a choice made with the clinical evidence of Harry's renal vulnerability already sitting on their monitors. To then present the resulting pharmacological collapse as a spontaneous "neurological event" is a fabrication that flies in the face of the very tests they billed me $255 to perform. They used my money to prove he was vulnerable, and then used that vulnerability to lethally over-medicate him.

Furthermore, it is at odds with the actual objective of the overnight hospitalisation – as evidenced by the invoice line items, “Hartmans Solution 1ltr & Potassium Chloride”:  These items, billed alongside the MILA set (billed as outlined below), are the building blocks of a multi-day rehydration and electrolyte stabilisation protocol.

The Failure of the 'ICU' Contract: I Paid for ‘Maintenance & Care’ But Got Negligence & Sedation

I was charged $320 for "CA ICU Hospital and Maintenance Fees" for November 30^th (in addition to the $277 the night before for an after hours consult by a vet so young I find it hard to believe she was even out of high school – and the degree to which she was out of her depth had a deer-in-the-headlights look etched into her face.

Yet, as I detail graphically in It Wasn’t ‘Euthanasia’. It Was A Calculated Cover-Up & A Pre-Meditated, Coerced, Clinical Killing LINK TO ARTICLE, while I walked through the ICU doors and heard my blind dog screaming while the staff ignored him to coo over a kitten and share a jovial social conversation, I find I was $320 for "Maintenance and Care”. Yet that care comprised of nothing other than (a) intentional negligence, and (b) the unnecessary and unauthorised convenience-sedation of a dehydrated senior dog with a dangerous cocktail of potent – and potentiated – strong sedatives.

The Clinical Contradiction

The billing shows a chilling level of financial opportunism right up to the end:

• High-End Billing:  I was charged $198.38 for an "IV Set Large Dura Flow Coil Mila" and $255 for lab tests (a comprehensive blood test panel that would have clearly demonstrated the renal-compromised status that, in turn, that made their (already unnecessary, convenience-based) administration of the Gabapentin sedative (further potentiated by Maropitant) was a fundamentally contraindicated pharmaceutical decision.

• The ‘Final Solution’:  They were billing me for high-end life-sustaining equipment at the same time as they were convincing me that the (undisclosed sedated) state they presented him back to me in was indicative of their claimed “neurological event” with immediate “euthanasia” required.

So let’s look at that specific line item:

‘IV Set Large Dura Flow Coil Mila IV Set @ $198.38’

To the average pet owner, that’s just a string of expensive-sounding technical jargon.
 
But in the veterinary world, the name MILA International means something very specific.

They are the specialist, "Gold Standard" manufacturer of high-end medical devices designed exclusively for animals. MILA is the premium brand. You don’t find this equipment in a budget back-street clinic; you find it in high-intensity, long-term care units.

But here’s the clinical "gotcha" that Steffi the intensive care vet (and the one pushing me from 100 different angles to let her terminate him) didn't count on me doing a little research and finding out:

The "Dura Flow Coil" is a specialised, high-durability IV extension line. It is designed with a specific coiled architecture so that a patient in the ICU can move, stand up, and turn around in their cage without the line kinking or snapping. It is built for a dog that is active, mobile, and recovering.

You don’t install a $200 MILA set on a dog you truly believe is "unfixable" - OR that is incapable of the sort of movement this particular brand of equipment is designed to accommodate.

You don’t open the most expensive, robust long-term stabilisation gear on the market for a dog you are planning to kill in an hour, if you can just get the owner to agree to it. You use a Mila set when you are committing to a prolonged, multi-day rehydration recovery.

So, I have to ask:  If "Steffi", the ICU vet, was so utterly certain at 11am on the phone, that Harry was a goner, that he had suffered some catastrophic “neurological event" from which, as she multiple times, from multiple different angles (emotional, psychological and, supposedly, “clinical”) assured me, why was I being billed for the premium equipment used to facilitate a long-term recovery?

Either the clinical staff knew Harry was recoverable with the right amount and duration of rehydration – and were prepping him for the long-haul rehydration I had brought him in for – or they were padding the invoice with high-end gear they knew would never be used, right up until the second they pressured me to sign his death warrant.

It’s the ultimate administrative proof of their duplicity. They sold me the "Gold Standard" promise of life on the invoice, while they were already prepping the $45 syringe to administer the “euthanasia” drug they were so eager to take him out with.

This invoice doesn't just show what  they charged me; it shows what they were thinking.

They were charging me for the equipment of hope and recovery. . . while they were delivering the irreversible act of clincal fraud and sheer moral depravity and wickedness.

CAPTION TO GO UNDER CLOSE-UP OF INVOICE AT EITHER TOP OR BOTTOM OF ARTICLE:

I did not expect that I would be unbeknownst to me, paying for my dog to be convenience-medicated into a "false-positive" “neurological failure” state.

I did expect that if a blood test panel was conducted to ascertain whether Harry had compromised kidney function (which he DID), that he would not be administered drugs which are specifically contraindicated for a dog with compromised kidneys – and that had the strong potential to cause him lethal damage.

I did not  expect that at the same time as he was being supposedly treated for the actual reason for admission – a sustained rehydration protocol due to dehydration – that he was being given completely unnecessary, contraindicated sedation and a plan to fabricate a “neurological event” was being developed, in order to provide reasoning for the strong push for his destruction.

I did not expect that I would be paying for a fabricated clinical diagnosis – on the basis of which a consent to “euthanise” Harry would be coerced from me, to cover up the evidence of the malpractice.

I did expect that I would be paying for competent treatment, honest diagnosis, and genuine overnight care (not convenience-medicated “animal storage” and the administration of unnecessary and contraindicated sedating medications – with one that potentiated the other).

I did expect that – even if you went ahead and breached your duty of obtaining my consent to “convenience-sedate” my dog that you would have disclosed that you had medicated him during a nearly one hour phone call to me that morning and a further in-person consultation of at least the same duration– albeit your focus was entirely on conditioning me to accept your “non-negotiable” push for his termination.

I did not   expect that I was being sold a pre-meditated exit strategy for my dog because he had become the embodied evidence of an incomprehensible degree of professional negligence and clinical malpractice so fundamental in nature that it might be argued that it was intentional. 

That is an additional consideration that would lead me to point the reader to my repeated, unsuccessful attempts over a period of two years or more to draw to the attention of the Companion Animal Hospital’s Practice Manager, Pauline Nijman, the various instances of negligence and toxic culture and attitudes towards patients and their owners that I had either witnessed or experienced myself. (LINK TO ‘WAS HARRY A MARKED DOG?’ ARTICLE)