BluePearl Pet Hospital — Attraction in Irvine

I wish I could give this hospital lower than zero stars, WOORST place to have your pet treated. They have absolutely no interest in treating your pet. They will instill fear in you and try to get as much as they can in those weak moments.

I have been fooled twice, the first time we went was for an ECG report as suggested by another vet. Blue Pearl takes our dog in for a check up but come back saying that the cardiologist isn't available that day and wanted us to reschedule for another day but we found another hospital who could perform an ECG the same day. As soon as we inform them that are taking her to another vet they come back telling us that cardiologist just walked in and they could do an ECG today. We waited outside, half an hour late we get a call from the vet saying that our dog will not make it if we don't leave her with them for atleast 3 days under there supervision beucase she is going into heart failure. We got d shocked beucase we didnt know her condition was that serious, we believed what she said and wanted to see our dog for the last time so while we are waiting we decided to take her home because we want to spend time with her if it was going to be her last hours or a few days but we were being pushed over and over again to admit her for three days and leave her under their supervision, we were constantly made to feel guilty that we are putting her life indanger if we take her so I questioned what are they going to do that we can't at home they said they " we would make sure that they give her meds on time and observe her for any signs of heart failure," we decided to take her back home with the meds and our dog is now perfectly fine and it's been about 8 months, so the reason why we went there in the first place was ECG... guess what ?? never got it, after sending them several messages for a month then finally went to the hospital for the report but were told that it was deleted by mistake but we never got refunded for it, we paid $1000 for that visit for ECG report, got charged but never received it.

We still gave them the benefit of doubt until the second episode of the coyote attack happened, this time the number of lies we were told was just insane. We rushed the dog to an emergency on may 1st which is a Saturday they come out to take the dog and someone calls me not from the hospital but from another location that the wounds are 3-4 inches deep so the only option they have is to either perform surgery which they shouldn't even suggest due to her heart condition and would cost about $20000 or to euthanize her if we can't afford it and just like before we were told these stories because they want to make money off us but because you're in a vulnerable state you agree to it, before they would even get started they wanted me to pay $10000 which I agreed to, so we leave her at the hospital around 6:)) am and call them back to check at 9:00 am to enquire about the time of the surgery, they tell us they don't have a surgeon until Monday so the dog would be waiting for a surgeon for two days we decide to look elsewhere so we called a few clinics and hospital we found an angel vet who eventually saved my dog, they released her at 11:00 am in the same condition she came in so what possibly they could have done in those four hours but give her some meds to stabilize her they charged me close to $3000 for it. Even worse, the itemized bill says a total of $2370, and they refunded me $7100 out of $10000, What is the extra $600 for? I took her to this clinic in Mission Viejo where I was informed by the vet that there is NO NEED FOR surgery because her wounds aren't that deep and she should recover in a week. We took her home in 2 hours with meds, neck collar, laser treatment, and cleaned her wounds for $550. I was so grateful to God to have saved my dog and that we got to this place at the right time but shocked at the same time by the stories we were told just a few hours ago, all I can say is that the way this place is trying to make money is absolutely inhumane...

First ER vet I saw was great. The only reason 1 star was given otherwise it would be negative stars. He was knowledgeable, communicative, compassionate, and as symptoms changed, so did the diagnostics and plan. I can’t recall his name but he was there on a Wednesday at about 5pm-7pm.

Other than that. Worst experience I’ve had at a vet. Maybe it’s because I’ve worked at a vet before and I’m used to better communication and efficiency but this place needs to revise multiple things.

My dog went from unilateral congestion in one nostril (saw two vets prior, looked in her nose and two abx prescribed) to some lower eyelid swelling and ataxia which made me bring her here. Within the time of going over her history, the pressure in her eye started to go up so she needed to be hospitalized to bring it down. All of that was fine and we knew the increased pressure was causing vision impairment. Then he found a small mass and we changed from doing a CT the next day to doing a full U/S to make sure there was no metastasis. Great plan.

After that. It was horrible. I was tossed from multiple vets, one was relaying messages from another. Kept talking me into diagnostics, saying it didn’t reveal anything we didn’t know. Go through multiple rounds of extremely expensive diagnostics to them saying “oh but we did notice an enlarged lymph node while sedating her for her CT so we did a FNA”. (So you mean to tell me my dog didn’t get a FULL physical exam prior to any of this and it was missed???)

Ended up being lymphoma and getting me into the oncologist. Told me lymphoma had good prognosis and that my dogs eye pressure was still elevated but holding stable and otherwise she was doing great, eating, no signs of bleeding (low platelets/anemic).

THEY FAILED TO MENTIONED THAT SHE HAD GONE COMPLETELY BLIND AND COULD’NT WALK SINCE SHE HAD BEEN HOSPITALIZED THERE.

So here I am, and expecting obviously some bad news but with at least some hope. NOPE. My dog was an extremely active Belgian Malinois. Why on earth would no vet or staff mention prior to doing all these diagnostics that she had gone blind and couldn’t walk?? Anyone that knows anything about that breed, knows their quality of life would be gone and they’d be unhappy.

Even the oncologist wasn’t aware of how bad she was. She was honest about how poor her prognosis was. Even my primary vet agreed and unfortunately knew it was her time. When I went to my primary vet, who had gotten all the medical records from Blue pearl. Well they either didn’t know how to read the CT or were waiting for the final interpretation, but they FAILED TO MENTION THE MASS EATING AWAY AT HER CAVITY.

Again. They literally just lack compassion and are in it for the money and “a definitive answer as far as diagnosis goes” vs the pets quality of life.

$12K later just to only get to spent a few hours with my dog after picking her up to having to let her go.

As someone who’s worked in the veterinary field for 6 years and now has been in human healthcare for years…. The docs I dealt with and this company should be ashamed. Sure, they ran the diagnostics but they failed the most important aspect which is the PHYSICAL ASSESSMENT AND QUALITY OF LIFE AND COMMUNICATION.

I had to start a go fund me to try and pay for her bills because of course I was willing to do whatever was necessary but my point is that most of it was unnecessary and I can’t believe no one has reached out. Honestly, even a refund for this experience would be more than appropriate. As a business owner in healthcare. This is something that shouldn’t happen. You should never give people false hope, leave out vital information, and pressure them to do more tests stating things like “I’d do whatever it took to save my dog”.

In hindsight, I should’ve fought the bill as soon as I picked up my dog and saw her condition but the quality of time I had left with her was far more important than anything. That dog wasn’t just a dog, she was a part of me, and my life will never be the same...

The one star is for the wonderful reception staff that worked so hard to make our visit as easy as possible. Unfortunately, the rest of the experience was an absolute disaster. Our dog was breathing funny and it looked like his ab muscles were contracting in a strange way every couple of breaths. His tail was also completely limp and he seemed to be uncomfortable and in pain. Due to the potential breathing issue, we took him into bluepearl to have him seen. The exam was done in the back with the vet without us so we have no idea what was done. The vet. Dr Lauren Kramer, came to talk to us afterwards and told us that all of his vitals were normal and she was not able to “illicit any pain” from him. We asked about the muscle contractions and the limp tail and she said that did not see any of it. The she asked if we wanted xrays and/or bloodwork but without any further information we didn’t want to put our dog through that. She said nothing was wrong with him and that we could monitor him at home and bring him back in if anything happened. We went back out to the reception desk and a tech brought our dog out and immediately we can see the muscle contractions and his limp tail. We point this out to the tech and he says that dogs are sometimes “ticklish” and that’s why their muscles are contracting. We pushed back and said this has been happening on its own without anyone touching him for hours and that his tail is still really limp even though it’s not normally that way and that no one at bluepearl has addressed either of these issues. He says he’ll talk to the vet again and disappears. Another tech shows up a little while later and asks “do you want pain medicine for your dog?” Feeling like we got no answers to what is wrong with him we reply “if that’s what is needed, yes that would be great. But we’d like to know what’s wrong with him.” The tech rudely replies “so you want pain medicine?” Completely disregarding what we said. We repeat “we’d like to know what’s going on with him before we give him anything or put him through unnecessary procedures.” The tech just walks away and says “I’ll get you pain medicine” he try to get his attention and stop him from walking away and he just ignores us. A third tech walks out and asks what’s going on, we explain the situation and she cuts us off to ask “is he nauseous?” We say no and she insists that he’s nauseous and that that is the problem. She goes and asks the vet again and she says that “if we want” we can do an X-ray and bloodwork. Again we reiterate for what feels like the 100th time that we’d like the vet to acknowledge the muscle spasms and the limp tail and that we’d like to know what she thinks is going on with him before making any decisions. At this point we had done some our own research and it looked like swimmers tail might be a likely source of his discomfort. But since we aren’t vets, we tell the tech, that swimmers tail seems to make sense but since we aren’t vets, we’d like the doctor to make that call since she is the professional. The tech takes our dog back to the vet and comes out 5 minutes later and prescribes pain medicine and anti-inflammatory for non descript “muscle pain”. I ask her one last time what the vet thinks the problem is and she just replies “just pain”.

In summary, the reception staff was amazing. The vet didn’t look at any of the things we asked her to and told us there was no problem and tried to shuffle us out the door. Every single tech was unbelievably rude and treated us like trash. Treatment options were thrown in our faces without any information on how those would help our dog. I can not recommend a...