Louisiana SPCA — Local services in New Orleans

I will say this: the vets are top notch, and are very caring and considerate about the furry friends that come through the clinic, and I will be FOREVER be appreciative of them (Dr. Adrienne forever holds my gratitude ,and if your fur child is in her care, you can best believe they are in good hands). If I were to rate the clinic staff in this regard, I would give 5 stars. However, my one star goes to whomever is running appointment desk, which is a hot mess. I requested a follow-up appointment for my pet in relation to an issue I brought him back to the clinic in April for. He had issues still presenting, so I requested a follow up appointment to see what to do. In 45 days time (I wish I was exaggerating), I requested over and over again an appointment for my pet to be seen by sending text messages, emails, voicemails, and even sending appointments requests through the online service portal (the overboard was in case my original request got lost/overlooked etc). I get that Covid-19 has seriously affected everyone, including this organization and everyone's lives in general. But the fact is that in 45 days, I was not able to get someone to respond with an indication as to whether or not my appointment request would be honored, or at least tell me to go elsewhere so my cat wouldn't have to continue to wait. The lack of communication especially after recieving two messages asking "How can we help you?" lets me know that my messages were in fact, received, and is overall perplexing and disturbing. Yes, I should have gone elsewhere by this, but again, I loved the treatment by the clinic there so I was willing to at least wait until someone got back to me. However, I've had friends that were able to get appointments in the 45 days time of me waiting for an email response, and figuring that I wasn't going to get one after continued waiting, I requested for my pet's records to be sent to me so that I could go to another vet and they know his medical history. My request was sent promptly 10 MINUTES after my email for those records, attached with a flippant response about how Covid-19 has affected the organization and "it was recommended for me to find another vet to suit my needs". The whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth with no one's willingness to respond to me other than to tell me to go away, and as much as I love the vets with the LaSPCA and have supported them through continuous donations to help others, I will not be returning since it was made very obvious by the only email I received with any sort detail, that they weren't interested in helping me with anything. This review may or may not influence anyone's willingness to go to the LaSPCA, and I'm not trying to say you shouldn't go here, which is the opposite because again, the care for the pets by the vets/support staff is phenomenal. I still believe full heartedly in their mission and what they do. However, its the treatment of people by whomever is handling the administrative side that I'm not satisfied with, especially since I have been to the clinic many times before. If you are given a runaround in similar situation like me, it could be a subtle indication for you to just go elsewhere because they aren't good at following up (or at least selective in whom they follow up with), and to that I say go elsewhere if you can't wait. Everyone else, you may have a better experience than I did. To the appointment desk, even though you could have addressed me in a better manner, I wish you nothing...

Have to admit the facility is really great for the animals. My complaint concerns the way we were treated by LASPCA while trying to adopt a dog.

My wife and I drove 100 mi to get to the facility on 7/1/17 to look for a dog to adopt. We filled out adoption papers for a Shih Tzu named SKYE that we both fell in love with. We made 2 passes around the adoption facility. The first pass SKYE jumped out of her bed and came to the window and started scratching for us to come in and play. So we got a volunteer to let us in, and SKYE ran back and forth between my wife and I for at least 30 minutes getting belly rubs and scratched behind the ears. Then, they let us take her into a bigger room and we tried to play fetch, but she just wanted more belly rubs. So we obliged. Afterwards, they finally put her back in her room and we continued to view the rest of the dogs. But we didn't have any encounters like the one we had with SKYE. So, we made one more pass. When we got back to where SKYE was being held, she started whimpering. It was like she knew it was us from before. And at that point we knew this would be a great friend and companion, and that we wanted to welcome her in our home.

However, when we turned in our adoption papers, we were told that their vet had to look her over before she could be adopted. Sorrowfully, she had an abdominal mass they had found. To be truthful, my wife and I didn't care what problems SKYE had, we would have done whatever it took to get her back to normal health. So, it was explained to us that they would contact us after the vet checked her out to discuss SKYE's adoption. So being close to July 4th, we kinda expected that we wouldn't get a call till sometime Wednesday. But still, Thursday rolled around and no news from the LASPCA.

So, I called Friday morning at 10:00am when the adoption center opened and had to leave a message on the answering machine. Still no call back by 2:30pm, so I decided to call again. At 2:51pm on Friday I finally got through. After telling them who I was, that I was calling to check on SKYE's vet visit, and if they could give me any info on where we were on the adoption process, they told me that they had let someone else adopt SKYE. Apparently, someone else came in on the same day of SKYE's vet visit on Wednesday, filled out adoption papers, and they let them have her that same day.

As I right this letter, my wife and I are heartbroken that we didn't get SKYE, and all we can do is hope that SKYE is well taken care of in her new home. But still, I feel LASPCA should have checked her file, seen our paperwork, and given us an opportunity. For that reason, I do not want to go back. This complaint is not something as trivial as someone not answering a phone and so forth. Its that LASPCA seemed like it did not even care about us by not calling us back. So this complaint concerns the LASPCA adoption policy and their lack of concern for people who try to adopt animals through there facility. I hope in some way LASPCA will not conduct this egregious behavior ever again so no one else has to share the same experience as...

My husband and I adopted A two-year-old corgi terrier mix one year ago and it was the best experience of my life. I’ve never had a dog before and neither had my husband and we were both very nervous about adopting for the first time. We were so pleasantly surprised to see how clean, bright and cheerful the SPCA in the West Bank was and we felt very confident in the staff. One of the staff in particular her name was Megan helped us in choosing the right Pet for us. She spent a lot of time getting to know our personalities and the type of pet we are looking for. She found us the perfect match in our adopted dog and we couldn’t be happier. We found out during the adoption process that our dog had heart worms but we are reassured by the SPCA staff that he would be treated free of cost. What felt like way longer than six months Was the entire process of getting him treated for heartworm’s. The SPCA was so helpful and supportive during the entire process. We just had a re-tested two days ago at the SPCA and he is heartworm negative. We could not be happier with our little Charlie who is the sweetest, most well trained and was the entire process of getting him treated for heartworm‘s. The SPCA was so helpful and supportive during the entire process. We just had a re-tested two days ago at the SPCA and he is heartworm negative. We could not be happier with our little Charlie who is the sweetest, most well trained and now very healthy dog/companion. We would recommend the SPCA to anyone who is looking for a dog to adopt. We plan on getting Charlie a companion someday in the future I will definitely be using the SPCA when...