Long Beach Animal Hospital — Local services in Long Beach

This was my second experience at this hospital, both were with birds. Different birds each time. Different problems. Both experiences left me feeling like I'd been cheated. Taken to the cleaners. Scammed. I hope you get it that I have not had a good experience there.

A neighbor rescued an exotic bird from her dog in the back yard and adopted it. Soon the bird comes down with extreme vertigo. He can't move without swooning and swaying all over the place. The neighbor asks me to take the bird as she is overwhelmed with children and work...... she knows I have a lot of birds.

I have the new little guy for 24 hours. He/she is affectionate and cute. He likes people. He eats for me and drinks water, but still too dizzy to function, so we take him to LBAH. We tell them what we know. They say they need to run tests, keep him overnight, give him meds., etc. They need a $500 deposit. We hardly know this bird. This is a LOT of $$. My son and I are very anxious about spending this much. We don't even know how old the bird is or what's wrong. LBAH tells us they don't know if it will recover and they can't do any testing without the deposit. We dig deep and pay the $500 and leave him overnight.

Next day they tell us the bird is a little better but still dizzy. They need to keep him another night. I am OK with this until they tell me they will need more $$. (They still don't know what is wrong, but suspect a couple of serious things that need a lot of intense care. ) I never talked directly to the vet. She's too busy. They don't recommend the bird go home yet, but they are going to need more money. He will need medication and close observation. They don't know what's wrong, but he might survive with the right care.... And more money.

I can't afford more money. I want to keep him, but it's so expensive, and we don't know if he will survive. They tell me I can relinquish him to their rescue program because he was found in the wild. They will take care of him , and if he survives they will find him a home, probably with one of the employees of the hospital, she said. I am thinking great, whatever he needs! we would like to have kept him, but his well-being is the most important thing. We did right to bring him here. I feel better. .... until they tell me I won't get my money back. Is the person who adopts him going to reimburse us for the $$ we've spent? No. They refunded us the cost of the meds we would have taken home with us if he had gone home. They still have aprox. $350 AND the little cute bird. If we relinquish him to the rescue program and the program takes him shouldn't we get our money back? She said no. We can't have the money back, nor can we have the bird back without paying a bunch more money. Huh? We don't even know this little bird. We have had him 24 hours, and he's cost us $350, and we don't get to keep him. We are maxed out at this point financially. But we really liked the little bird.

We wanted to do right by the little guy. We love birds at our house. We were obviously willing to go out on a limb for him. But now we are out $350 just for having taken a little parrot off the hands of a busy neighbor.

I was not told by the hospital that they had a rescue program until AFTER we had paid them, and after the test results were back.

I would feel differently if he had died. I would know we tried and did what was right. But now no bird. No money. If he survives someone else is going to take him home, at my expense. I have a bad taste in my mouth.

My other experience there was less expensive, but also heart-breaking. A case where the vet turned out to be completely wrong about everything she said to me, but I had to pay anyway. She gave a second opinion and second look at my conure who had been munched by a dog, (different bird and different dog). The bird's eye was injured. Vet Lady said it was going to be fine. Don't worry. A week later the bird had only 1 eye.

Never...

Short story: One of the best vets around, and saved my rat twice!

Long Story: I'll cut this as short as I can. The first time I brought Basil here, his respiratory infection was not responding to the meds his other vet had given him, and I asked them to do what they could to save him. After discussing my financial situation and doing what they could, they not only gave him antibiotics that helped him to make a 180 within 2 days, they also kept the price as affordable as possible. He had been knocking on deaths door when I brought him in on a Saturday night at 10:00 pm, and by Monday morning he was eating, drinking, responding to me, grooming himself, everything!

The second time I brought him in wasn't necessarily a 'knocking on deaths door' situation, but they did a remarkable job with him. Basil and my other rat Mooshika hate each other. Their fights have escalated recently, and so I keep them separate from each other. One day while I was cleaning their cage, I walked to my garage to throw some laundry into the wash, and when I returned I found Basil had 3 large (thumb-knuckle sized) lacerations on his body and his left ear was nearly ripped off. I initially took him to Yorba Regional Animal Hospital, but they said they couldn't help him because their small-animal vet was out. I immediately took him here, and they fixed him right up! He had a tonne of staples in his wounds and tonnes of bald spots where they had shaved him to get a clearer view of things, but he was so comfortable with the team at Long Beach Animal Hospital (LBAH) that he hadn't bit any of them as they stapled him, and was even eating the treats they gave him.

Cut to 3-4 weeks later, on January 2nd 2019. It's 7:30 pm, I'm wrapping up the evening, and just as I am preparing to put Basil away (he was sitting on my bed while my other rats ran around on the ground), Basil jumps on Mooshika and attacks him. Mooshika in turn bit a tumor I had not seen on Basil's back-right leg and Basil starts bleeding severely. Initially I took him to Yorba Regional Animal Hospital, thinking that their small animal expert might be out but at least they would try to stop him from bleeding out, right? Wrong. They refused to do anything to help him, they wouldn't even try to stem the bleeding. So I wasted 20 minutes getting to their hospital, I now had to drive an additional 35-40 minutes to LBAH. By the time I got him there he was lethargic and looking even more pale in his bald spots than usual. I got him there by about 8:30-45, and didn't leave until 11:30, but they saved him. They bandaged him up, gave him fluids to assist with the blood loss, everything.

This Hospital is the best. The doctors are excellent, personable, and incredibly sensitive to how important your animal is to you. They seemingly treat everything there, and they don't try to bully you into treatments or purchases you can't afford. They have saved Basil's life at least twice, and I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am for that. If I could give this place more stars, I would.

Just a note, I added photos of how blood-covered my counter tops were. Keep in mind, this is from a single 1 lb rat and this is how much he bled within...

Worst Rabbit Vet I've ever been to.

A synergistic effect started with my rabbit after she was injured from a procedure at this Hospital under the care of Dr. William Ridgeway and his staff. Day 1 after the procedure? They never got back to me all day about my pet's declining condition after leaving LBAH. Day 2 after procedure, I was unable to see Dr. Ridgeway the treating doctor during his hours, but I made an emergency appt that evening with the treating doctor on staff--Dr. Wood and the staff cancelled on me after I was already in the car for 30 minutes driving from LA to Long Beach to get there, because she had to go into emergency surgery. Day 3? I make an appt. to see Dr. Ridgeway and the Dr. confirms the pet is very ill and yet has no concept that she became ill from the procedure they did 3 days earlier--Totally Clueless that there was a connection when it was self-evident. That's when I knew I had the wrong vet Vet folks!

A nightmare of the 2 previous days was now continuing to day 3 and I saw that it wasn't just the staff that failed my pet, it was also Dr. Ridgeway who seemed just as nonchalant as his staff had been for the previous 2 days. Sadly, I couldn't find another vet in time to bring my rabbit to another clinic, so I felt I had to leave her there for care that I could not give as I am not a Vet. But the pet was then killed by another procedure I never signed off on on the treatment plan within 20 minutes of my leaving her there. Not good.

Important to note: the office was training people the day of the injury from the original procedure AND also the day of her death. Here I was in an emergency situation by day 3, needing urgent care and no nonsense help, and Dr. Ridgeway's staff, couldn't even keep the hot water bottles hot enough to raise my pet's body temperature. I was completely blindsided that I had been coming here for years--(BUT NEVER had an Emergency until now) and this was the reality of who my Vet was all along. This was not the right Vet for my Rabbit. The entire incident was just shocking on every level. It was bad.

I made a video about it if you're interested. Look up "Dr. Ridgeway long beach animal hospital reviews" on Google, under videos (it won't come up except if you click on videos).

Based on my experience with my dead pet? I absolutely do NOT recommend this hospital for rabbits. The staff and doctors "Standard of Care" was...