My family and I recently purchased a puppy from My Next Puppy. When we were going over the purchase paperwork they did not try to hide the fact that the puppy was diagnosed with kennel cough 5 days prior. As an experienced pet owner I know that kennel cough is fairly common in puppies and normally not that serious especially since he'd already been on his antibiotics for almost a week. They provided us with the rest of his meds as well as the wellness visit caveat. We were required to either go to their NOVA Pets within 2 business days (no charge) or schedule an appointment with an outside vet within 4 business days (25% covered). As NOVA Pets made the diagnosis, my husband and I agreed that finishing out his treatment there before transferring him to our family vet made sense.

During the examination he did the bare minimum as far as exams go. As an experienced pet owner i've sat through my fair share of pet wellness exams. He didn't bother with taking his temperature nor did he bother examining his nasal cavity. One would figure that if the patient was recently diagnosed with an upper respiratory infection one might check such things but nope. Instead, once he figured out that we intended to transfer him to our family vet after his cough cleared, he stopped the exam. Only credit i'll give the vet is that he realized three more doses of meds weren't going to clear the symptoms and told us to come back Saturday for more meds.

Fast forward to Wednesday when a very lethargic puppy's breathing was fast and shallow. I obviously wasn't comfortable taking him to the vet that cared more about lining his pockets then giving a proper exam to a sick puppy so I took him to our family vet. He wasn't in the exam room more than 3 minutes before the vet ordered X-Rays and what do you know, they came back showing signs of a cloudy right lung. He was diagnosed with pneumonia and hospitalized overnight. Based on the X-Rays the vet estimated he'd had pneumonia for more than 5 days.

As a result i'm stuck with a $1700 vet bill because there was no way I was taking my puppy to someone who didn't care.