Goddard Veterinary Group Walthamstow-London

We have just picked up our dog from the Walthamstow branch. This follows a procedure he has undergone today to be sedated under general anaesthetic so that his ears could be assessed and treated. Grass seeds were found in both ears, in one ear the grass seed had perforated the ear drum. The vet and nurse advised he would have been in significant pain for a long time. It was their explicit medical opinion that these grass seeds had long been established and embedded within his ear canal. We are very disappointed, and verging on disgust, at the fact this has escalated to this point. We have been bringing our dog to this branch of Goddard's for appointments to assess his ears since March 2022. At each appointment (March 22, Nov 22, Jan 23, Sept 23 - sometimes multiple appointments in each month with follow ups) we have been given conflicting and unclear advice, and have seen a rotation of different clinicians (usually working as locums) with absolutely no continuity of care. At the last appointment in September 2023, the vet told us that they suspected the reason our dog was having recurring issues with his ears was because he had allergies and that we should spend a considerable sum of money (estimated to be in the thousands by the Goddard vet) having a vaccine created to treat this. However, based on our continued assessments of our dog, as his owners, we felt confident that allergies were not the cause of his ongoing issues and so did not pursue this specious diagnosis. His issues persisted, and through our own research, we decided to book our dog in to be fully sedated under GA so that the cause of the underlying problem could be fully investigated. We were not advised to take this course of action by your vet but upon picking him up this evening it has become clear that this should have been done at the very first consultation in 2022, and that our dog had been enduring unnecessary pain all this time. Furthermore, we incurred the burden of unnecessary costs of consultation and procedures as a result of a succession of, at best, inconclusive and, at worst, apathetic rounds of consultation. The RCVS Code of Conduct clearly states your duty of care to animals like our dog; it is clear in this case that Code of Conduct has not been upheld. The care has not been appropriate and has been inadequate. The vets he has seen have treated him with long-lasting antibiotics on multiple occasions and not sought out the root cause of the issue. In my opinion, this also amounts to irresponsible prescribing - this is prohibited under the RCVS Code of Conduct. We expect our considerable expenses will be reimbursed and this has been made clear in a separate email to you. To add to this, when we collected our dog today it was clear that he was in a state of distress. He urinated over the consultation floor upon seeing us. At which point my husband - equally distressed at this scene - took him outside mid-consultation (the observing vet thought of doing nothing except for saying 'shame', repeatedly). As my husband took our dog for a walk, he urinated for nearly two minutes - suggesting that he had not been cared for appropriately subsequent to his procedure. My husband and I have never seen our dog in this state and, the response of the observing vet, we attribute towards a continuing theme of a lack of professional care and empathy.