Frustration

I became quite frustrated on Thursday evening and I wanted to share with you why.

Hal and I had been preparing for about 5 days for our weekend away. We had lots of little errands and things to do before Friday to make sure that all of the loose ends were tied up before we left. We had been planning on boarding Layla (our dog) at the Petsmart Petshotel in Greenville since we started planning the trip. We wanted her to have a fun place to go where she wouldn't be stuck in a kennel all day.

On Monday I called Petsmart to make her reservation and ask them what I needed to board her. They told me to send over her shot record. Well I actually forgot about it until Wednesday, and finally remembered to fax it over. As soon as I faxed it over a lady from Petsmart called and said they had a question about one of her shots. They asked which round of Parvo Layla had last. They said that she would have to have 3 rounds to be able to board. Well since I am no veterinarian, I had no idea about "rounds" of anything.

When I got that call I immediately called the Spartanburg Humane Society where we adopted Layla. They do not have a direct line into their phones, they just have an answering machine that takes all calls and says that someone will call back as soon as possible. After I left 2 messages and the lady at Petsmart left 2, and never received a return call by Thursday afternoon, I was pretty furious. We were supposed to be boarding our dog in 24 hours and NO ONE ever called us!

From there, Hal and I got in the car and drove down to the Humane Society to get some answers. Here is what they told us: Layla had ONE Parvo round the day we adopted her, and they were SUPPOSED to tell us to bring her back in 3 weeks to get the 2nd, but guess what, they didn't tell us anything. And guess what else? NO ONE would board her for the weekend! The Humane Society didn't even admit that they had made a BIG mistake, and did not do anything to compensate us in any way.

Had this never come up, we would have never known that Layla was missing TWO Parvo shots, and we would have never gotten them. She could have died because of this, and we would have never known. The Humane Society didn't tell us ANYTHING when we adopted her, they just sent us on our merry way, without any further instruction.

We expect a place like the humane society, where animals are their business, to be professional and informing. They failed majorly. Petsmart and our vet's office, Dr. Patch, were both extremely accomodating, but when they found out about her shots there was really nothing they could do. Thankfully, Hal's parents were in town and took care of her.

I am still extremely frustrated with the humane society, and will probably not adopt another dog from there again. The quality of service is quite poor, and unfortunately the animals are the ones that suffer.

We did have a great weekend away, though! I will post more about that and some pictures later tonight or tomorrow.