Tell Tail Veterinary Urgent Care — Local services in San Diego

Do not take your beloved pet to Tell Tail Veterinary Urgent Care! Dr. Melissa Cody and Char the vet assistant were incredibly rude and incompetent. Dr. Melissa Cody only cared about going home and charging us for unnecessary diagnostic testing. If you are looking for high quality services, professionalism and people who care about the animals look elsewhere.

I took my dog here last week as a walk in since his regular vet was all booked for the day. I searched for the closest urgent care as this was a pressing issue and found this place. From the start the employees were uninterested and disengaged. I was told they may not be able to see my pet and when they came back and said they could they seemed reluctant and annoyed to have another patient. As a first time dog owner and worried for his health, I just wanted my pup to receive help ASAP and was relieved when they took him in. I should have walked away at this point because this negative experience just continued to get worse.

When we went into the medical room there was dog urine everywhere and it smelled horrible which is unacceptable for a medical facility. I kindly let the Char know without being upset about the urine all over the floor and she appeared upset to clean it up.

Once we explained all the symptoms and why we are here they took him to the back for a physical exam and to test for a disease he has a vaccine for, which we explained. Char made us feel guilty and portrayed us as uncaring pet parents and pretty much pressured us into testing we knew was unnecessary. I believe that they used our anxiety and worries to make us feel bad and charge us for all these unnecessary diagnostics which did not even look at the main reason we were there for which was the blood we found on him!

Once the unnecessary test was completed, Dr. Melissa Cody came back and talked to us for no more than 5 minutes and gave us no time to ask any follow-up questions or provide any recommendations or reasons as to what might be causing the blood. Preventative care, at-home strategies and a detailed summary of her findings were not discussed as they would in any debriefing with the vet. It was very clear she was ready to leave and uninterested in helping our dog (we were her last patient). I have never seen such an uncaring and unprofessional vet. Dr. Melissa Cody then sent back Char to review an estimate with us and stated that our dog is too "crazy" he would need sedation to get any sort of sample from him. This is completely false, I was able to be seen by his regular vet a few days later and they were able to get a sample just fine without trying to charge us hundreds of dollars to sedate him for no reason! When the nurse came back she quoted us over $1,500 in additional testing that may or may not even tell us what is wrong (words from the vet) in addition to the $250 we already paid for a physical exam and testing for diseases my dog is vaccinated for. On top of this, Char kept reminding us that we need to hurry up with our decision since they close in an hour.

At this point, we just left. I could not believe how rude and uncaring Dr. Melissa Cody and Char could be. They literally just wanted to upcharge us and sadly did not care about the well being of our dog. We left in tears without any new information or help for our pup.

I do not recommend Tell Tail Veterinary Urgent Care or Dr. Melissa Cody. I have only had positive and caring vet experiences until coming to...

Worst experience of my life. Please learn from my experience. I don't want to go in to details but my dog had something visible wrong. They immediately took her back (1 star for fast service). The "doctor" comes in to the exam room, without my dog and goes straight to fear mongering. Yes, FEAR MONGERING, talking about all the "ifs" and nothing about the actual issue. It was disheartning because I am already upset not know what is wrong and there is this dr telling me she is old and can be a life threating but she needs my permission to do studies on her. She then lets the "numbers person" (her words) come in and tell me JUST FOR DIAGNOSTIC it is going to be $2500-$3000. Im baffled because how can you not just do lab work first and rule out the cancer she is suspecting and then slowly work our way up? Then, when I decline because there is no way in hell I have that kind of money, the "number person" says "well do you want the medicine the doctor is suggesting, at least?....it should be less than $200 for the medicine." RED FLAG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How are you going to give me medicine, for a dog that you have not done lab work on or examine properly? What if my dog has other internal issues? It was insane to me. Nothing but a money trap by fear mongering knowing dam well your pets are everything to us. I grabbed my dog and took it somewhere else. I won't want to disclose where because I don't want this to be advertisement for someone else. But when I took my dog to another place that was actually legit! They ran blood work right away, took xrays, did an ultrasound and gave her medicine for $400. Yes, ALL THAT for $400. Not only that but the doctor actually sat with us and explained EVERYTHING in depth to us and never processed without facts and common sense. Oh and by the way for the 5 minutes I was at Tell Tail and the fear mongering I had to pay $100 for my "consultation". $100 for a half a$5 fear mongering. No type of care for my dog. So please if you're having true fear and in a tough situation with your dog call around til you get a better answer. No need to go in debt for your baby or lose rent money. There is better options out there. Don't allow anyone, not even a "doctor" fear monger you by throwing fancy medical terms and scary terms to get you to go in debt. Good luck with...

I recently had to take my dog here for urgent care, because my normal amazing veterinary clinic was full and we needed immediate care. Tell tail was unsanitary and staffed with individuals who seemed like they did not want to be bothered with cleaning up, or doing anything other than head home for the day. We were almost instantly separated from our dog, and he was not brought back to us until we paid, which I believe is a tactic to put more pressure on you. They charged us over 200$ for an initial physical and a parvo test, even though he is vaccinated for parvo, and we said we didn't think he had it. The consultation after the physical added absolutely zero additional information other than that he (of course) did not have parvo. They said nothing was likely to be wrong with him, but if anything it was an UTI. The vet then left and someone came in to show us a quote for tests costing a total of 1500$ they wanted to do. The urinalysis alone was going to cost 600$ because they wanted to SEDATE him. They refused to offer any treatment without putting him through the expensive testing. We left with no additional information and 250$ poorer, feeling like chumps and even more worried about our pup due to the fear mongering the employees attempted to use to get us to spend a bunch of money there. We took him to our vet the next day and they treated him for 50$. Overall I feel this place is one of the much too common scam vets that simply try to twist your lack of knowledge and deep love for your pets into something dark just to earn money, while offering as little actual care as possible. I wonder if vets like this start out caring, but are corrupted by high student loans, or if they always planned on...