Latest news with #emergencyvet
CBS News
16-07-2025
- CBS News
Man says Pittsburgh-area emergency vet euthanized his son's lost dog without trying to contact him
A Butler County family is blaming a local emergency vet for killing their lost dog over the Fourth of July holiday. Roy Meyerl said his son Brandon has owned Rowdy, a 7-year-old American bully, with his wife Michele since he was a pup, and like most dogs, he is scared of fireworks. "They were having their picnic, and the neighbors next door started really blowing off some big stuff," Roy Meyerl said. "So at that time, my son went upstairs to check on the dog and check on the house and so on and the dog got out the front door." Meyerl said Rowdy got loose around 9:30 p.m. on July 4. "He ran across the street. It's happened before, so my son figured he'd come back, so he gave it a little bit. No dog, no dog, no dog," Meyerl said. Within an hour, Meyerl said a neighbor called his son about a lost dog. "A neighbor called and said, 'Hey, any Blue America bullies up there at all?' And this, again, this is a pit bull, but this dog will lick you to death," Meyerl said. "And at that point they said, 'Oh man,' he says, 'My neighbors, who are elderly, found the dog on their doorstep and sent it off to a vet. They drove it to a vet.'" By 11:30, Brandon was on the phone with BluePearl in hopes of picking up Rowdy when he said he got unexpected and shocking news. "They said, 'We're sorry, sir, we've euthanized your dog," Meyerl said. "What is the reason the vet gave for doing that?" KDKA investigative reporter Erika Stanish asked. "They said he was panting and he was in distress. He was panting and hot in distress," Meyerl said. Now, the Meyerls want answers to why the vet euthanized their dog without attempting to contact them first. "He had a collar on. He was chipped. He had a tag on, the whole nine yards," Meyerl said. "He was here for less than three hours, and they put a needle in my dog, in our dog, and they killed our dog." The Meyerls said Rowdy was healthy and had no prior medical issues. "This dog will lick you to death. In my opinion, with pit bulls, it's how you raise a dog. The dog is a loving, great dog," Meyerl said. According to paperwork provided to KDKA-TV by the family, BluePearl stated that Rowdy was brought in "after being found outside of a good Samaritan's house and panting." A vet at BluePearl then diagnosed Rowdy, who is referred to as "Blackberry" in the paperwork, with "heat stroke" and "upper respiratory obstruction." In a summary of treatment and procedures, the paperwork states, "No microchip was found and no collar was found for identification. Due to severely guarded to grave prognosis Blackberry was humanely euthanized." "This is a butcher shop behind me. That's what it is. They kill dogs, and they killed our dog. That's what I want the public to know," Meyerl said. "If this dog's leg would have been hanging off, hit by a car, sure, we would have never been here. Thank you very much for putting my dog out of misery. This dog was panting from the Fourth of July for God's sakes!" The Meryels said when they went to pick up Rowdy's remains, the vet refused to release him until they paid $320 for his "cremation/dignity package." Meanwhile, the Meyerls said Rowdy was never cremated at all as they received and carried out his body after paying, later taking him to their own vet to be cremated. "Yeah, so that was for putting a needle in and killing our dog. They charge us 400 bucks. Yep. Never a call. Never, 'Hey, man, I think we might have screwed up here.' What happened?" Meyerl said. KDKA-TV reached out to BluePearl for comment. A spokesperson said they can't comment on individual cases. KDKA-TV then asked BluePearl what their standard policy is when a lost or stray dog shows up at the vet office. A spokesperson sent this statement: "Whenever a good Samaritan brings an animal or stray into any one of our hospitals, we make a concerted effort to locate the owner. Our routine protocol is to scan for a microchip in the first instance." KDKA-TV then asked what steps, if any, are taken to locate an animal's owner. "Once the patient is deemed in stable and healthy condition, if we are unable to detect a microchip, we partner with local rescue organizations to provide care until the owner is located, or a loving home is established," a BluePearl spokesperson said. KDKA-TV asked in what case an animal would be euthanized and how quickly those decisions are made. A spokesperson said, "In scenarios where the patient presents in advanced critical condition or with catastrophic injury, we must prioritize the welfare of the animal and make decisions that are most humane. This is in line with the commitment made by all veterinarians to ensure the prevention and relief of animal suffering."
The Guardian
03-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
As I bid a final farewell to my stinky, slovenly dog, I wondered: did I ever truly know him?
When the woman from the pet crematorium asked what to put on the plaque, I had a single thought. Rupert, I told her, who ate a live mouse. The mouse had been inside the house. We had a full army chasing it – me, the kids, a herd of cats – but it had escaped our clutches for a full 30 minutes until, to my horror and delight, I turned just in time to see a scaly tail slip between my dog's jaws. I've always wondered how long a mouse could live in a dog's digestive tract. Too long, probably. Rupert lay down for a long time after that. In the 14 years I lived with my dog, I learned exactly one thing about him: he loved to eat stuff that could kill him. I once planted a pair of camellia trees in pots under my window, only to come back at the end of the day to find them devoured to their roots. An emergency vet visit revealed an entire tray of sausages not even chewed. He ate dark chocolate, including foil. He once ate a packet of crayons and literally shat out a rainbow. His iron stomach was undefeated to the end. All of this is true. But it's also all I knew of him. And now that he's gone, I don't know how to miss him. I didn't have dogs growing up. We were cat people. But movies and books and the general population led me to believe that a dog was a guaranteed soulmate: a shadow who would not leave your side for a moment. A dog would miss you every second of every day. It would relish in your joy and comfort you in sadness. It would protect, honour, cherish and adore you. Rupert did none of this. He had no interest in people. Never – not once – did he come to me for attention. If I tried to walk him, he refused to leave the house. He flunked out of puppy school, didn't respond to his name and couldn't be trusted with smaller, food-sized dogs. If he couldn't eat it or sleep on it, it simply did not exist. I tried hard to get to know him. He hated baths. When he knew food was coming, he stamped his front paws like an excited child. He was allergic to cats and would sometimes sneeze so violently he slammed his enormous skull into the floor. He was incomprehensibly handsome. He was black and soft like a bear, with small, wide-set ears and a white mane. He had one brown eye (glaucoma took the other one). If you parted the black fur on top of his head, it was inexplicably ginger underneath. On the odd occasion he was seen in public, people would cross the street to call him beautiful and he would give them absolutely nothing in return. At the end of his life, Ru was completely deaf, mostly blind and rapidly deteriorating. But when the vet asked if his behaviour was changing I had to concede that no, it was the same as ever: deep sleep punctuated by eating something revolting. I don't think Rupert disliked me. I'm not sure he knew I even lived here. The only time I ever saw him acknowledge another living creature was during my other dog's cancer treatment, when she was away in surgery. On those days, he would lie by the front door and cry softly, sometimes long into the night. She does the same for him now. Just waiting. He died in the middle of the night. We all went with him to the small room. It was 3am. He had been barking nonstop for six hours and I knew – finally, something I understood about him – that this was the end. In the last minutes I lay on the lino floor with my face in his fur and asked him what he remembered. Did he remember sleeping under my feet when we drove home for the first time? Did he remember getting a steak with a candle for his birthdays? Did he remember when he ate a live mouse? And then the barking stopped, and when I sat up he was sleeping with his paws stretched out in front of him, the way he did when he was a baby. Later in the day, flowers arrived at our house. Heartfelt cards shared in our grief. 'You've lost your shadow,' people said, but that wasn't true. Rupert never reduced himself to being my shadow. He was a dog. To anthropomorphise him was to undermine the simple, canine way he looked at the world. Eat. Sleep. Eat again, but grosser. 'They leave such a big hole,' people said, but he hasn't. It's a very small hole, actually: a specific corner of the kitchen, underneath the window, where he slept so aggressively soundly that the tiles eventually cracked right off. I bought new vases. I lined up the bouquets on the mantelpiece. I struggled to understand how my stinky, slovenly dog fit into this picturesque sadness. Then I noticed all the flowers were dog-safe. No daffodils, azaleas or lilies of the valley. I stood in front of this display of canine sorrow and realised: he was there. The one thing I knew about him. 'Thank you for the flowers,' I told my friends. 'Rupert would have loved to eat them.'
