My dog has been limping since March/April 2020.
I took him to Dr Peterek on 4 or 5 different occasions starting from April. At first, Dr Peterek believed it was a luxation patella and advised me to prescribe him anti-inflammatories for 12 days. After those 12 days, there were no signs of improvement so I took the dog back to Dr Peterek who advised to give more anti-inflammatories for another 10-12 days. Still no improvement! When I took him back, I saw Dr Welzl who didn’t wait and performed an xrays straight away. The dog was diagnosed with athrithis according to the xrays and was prescribed B12 vitamins and more anti-inflammatories. The dog’s first blood tests showed no signs of any particular sicknesses. After giving B12 and anti-inflammatories for another week or two. The symptoms were still showing and the dog started limping again as soon as we stopped giving anti-inflammatories. I took him back in July for some more blood tests. The blood results were getting worse and worse. (Problems with kidney, thyroid). At this point, I personally believed the dog had IVDD and Dr Peterek told us that a surgery wouldn’t help and claimed that “all dogs limp from time to time”. My dog had severe muscle spams in the neck area and Dr Peterek told us that the spasms will eventually go away... I don’t understand how constant muscle spams in that region wasn’t a red flag to him that there are some serious neurological problems... The next day, we decided to take him to an emergency clinic to perform a full MRI scan of the spine. It turns out that the dog has a spinal tumor and the tumor has already started eating the spine which is unfortunately inoperable at this stage. We’re going to have to put the dog down soon. Our dog has been suffering for 4 months and not once, Dr Peterek raised any concerns or worries regarding our dog’s health. He even advised to take him for longer walks to help with “athrithis”...
I understand that tumors are generally inoperable and that medecine is not an accurate science but I don’t understand how a vet can be full with ignorance for so long after so many visits and then tell us that the pain will eventually go away... I would have appreciated if Dr Peterek told us from the beginning that something doesn’t seem right and that the dog should go do an MRI... We had to guess ourselves that something didn’t seem right! It’s heartbreaking that we put so much faith and trust in veterinarians when they don’t have a clue of what the real problem is and on top of that are totally ignorant. As I’m quite an anxious person when it comes to sicknesses, the first time I went to Dr Peterek, I did ask if there was a possibility that my dog has some sort of bone cancer to which he replied “the chances of having a bone cancer in those types of dogs are close to none”. Well, guess what... Our dog falls into that group! So, in other words, that poor dog was doomed from the start and no matter how many times we took him to the vet, no one thought outside of the box which is why I don’t understand how it took so long, and hadn’t we decided to go do an MRI, Dr Peterek wasn’t even close to guessing what it really was... Why base yourself on statistics, when, unfortunately, statistics aren’t always accurate! I’m not blaming Dr Peterek for my dog’s bumpy road but not being so confident about a pet’s health problems could maybe save other dogs lives... Our dog is almost paralysed and we have to prepare to say goodbye at any moment from now. If you suspect your pet to have a neurological, oncological or other issues, don’t waste your time and money and do not trust Dr Peterek. I cannot say anything about Dr Welzl because he only saw the dog once and he did what he had to do. Dr Peterek is on the other hand a very kind vet and he’s always been very kind to our dog, our dog actually liked him. But I don’t need a kind vet for my pet, I need a vet that I can trust in saving my dog’s life or at least give us some useful advice... which hasn’t been the case, unfortunately.
