Demands mount for emergency veterinary service in Chatham-Kent following death of dog
CBC
When Sharron Giles tried to get emergency care for her ailing 10-year-old chihuahua Jenny Penny on Saturday, Oct. 16, she said she couldn't find a single veterinary office in Chatham-Kent that was open that day to take her.
"These offices were open, they should have seen her," said Giles, who lives in Blenheim.
Giles said she couldn't take the dog to her own vet because she was closed Saturdays. She can't remember which offices she talked to, but she said they gave her various reasons not to see her dog, such as: she was not a client, she didn't get the dog vaccinated there and they were over booked. Giles said she was told to take the dog to Windsor.
When she called the Lauzon Veterinary Hospital there was no answer. When she got a hold of the Walker Road Animal Hospital she said she was told to leave the dog and the vet would call her.
Giles' daughter Cheryl Tompkins was about to take the dog to Windsor when Giles managed to get a vet in Petrolia to see Jenny. Tompkins took the dog there but found out Jenny had a tumour and had to be euthanized.
Jenny wouldn't have survived even if she was able to get her seen sooner, she said. Giles is furious the dog had to suffer longer than it had to.
"My problem is this was an emergency. This was unexpected. The vets were open. It doesn't matter if it's night or day and you have an emergency, you can't get through to a vet," said Giles.
Lynn Leveille, who has hundreds of names on a petition calling for 24-hour emergency care in Chatham-Kent, said this is just the latest in a list of heart breaking cases that have occurred over the past year and a half since veterinarians in the municipality stopped offering that service.
"Basically what we're after is to reinstate 24-hour care in Chatham-Kent," said Leveille. "We have a very simple answer as far as we're all concerned. Rotate emergency service."
Vasant Barot is the veterinarian who eventually saw Jenny. He agrees the vets could take turns.
"A group of the small clinics can work on a rotary way," said Barot.
Leveille said all 11 clinics in the municipality used to have emergency care for their clients.
"It just slowly, very quietly started disappearing," said Leveille. "Most people were never even informed."
She said without emergency care in Chatham-Kent it's an hour's drive to Windsor or London and in most situations the animals can't survive that long.
Michael Vandell has been re-elected as chief of Deh Gáh Got’ı̨ę First Nation in N.W.T., defeating former Dehcho MLA Ronald Bonnetrouge.
A Canadian military counter-intelligence operative, accused of passing sensitive information to a foreign entity, was having conversations with a representative of Ukraine, CBC News has learned.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team has been called in to investigate an incident at the Dalhousie LRT station in which a Calgary police officer shot a man who was “acting erratically and carrying a knife.”
Around 40 people have been temporarily displaced after a building fire in O’Leary, in P.E.I.'s Prince County.
The price of the benchmark North American crude blend known as West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, slid to a four-year low on Tuesday, dipping to $55 US a barrel after starting the year off around $80.
The young man accused of being impaired and behind the wheel at the time he slammed into a Toronto family’s van, killing three children, has pleaded guilty in the case.
Gavin McKenna knew the haters would be ready to pounce.
Despite a deal to push government bills through their final stages before the House of Commons rose last Thursday, two pieces of priority budget and border legislation, C-4 and C-12, can't become law until at least February.
Skate Canada says it will no longer host major events in Alberta following a review of the province's legislation on the participation of transgender athletes in women's sport.
A surge of influenza among school-aged kids is linked to the recent deaths of multiple Ontario children, prompting calls for Canadian families to get vaccinated as medical experts brace for a worsening wave of infections across all age groups.
A London family doctor is not allowed to practice medicine for 10 months after being found guilty of professional misconduct.
Nearly three weeks after it started, the most complex fire in Toronto's history is finally out, but residents of two buildings in Thorncliffe Park still don't know if they'll be back home for the holidays.
The family of a man with schizophrenia charged with two counts of attempted murder is bracing for an aspect of the criminal justice system that is almost inevitable.