I realize it’s been a while since I mentioned the horrible service and horrible treatment at Brambleton Veterinary Hospital in Roanoke, especially the conduct of Dr. Linda Jennings. I wanted to remind everyone of what a terrible place it is, and how so many ex-customers found this blog and posted their horror stories.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can read the start of the story in this post, entitled “Avoid Brambleton Veterinary Hospital in Roanoke.”

And if you want to read more — like how employees posted pretending to be customers, or how a customer named Diane Whitemore of Roanoke lied about what happened and got caught, well, you can start by searching on “Brambleton Vet” or “Brambleton Veterinary Clinic” on this site.

Why am I bringing this up now? It’s been a while, and I just wanted to be sure that anyone looking for information on Linda Jennings finds this site and gets to know what a horrible person she really is. Carry on.

I guess the Brambleton Veterinary Hospital folks have run out of ideas.

Lessee… first we have the vet, Dr. Linda Jennings, calling the SPCA here in Roanoke, VA, demanding that they fire my wife (who didn’t even work there) because Dr. Linda Jennings didn’t like us complaining about the lousy service we received.

She lied to the people at the SPCA, and I was able to prove that. She also made a fool of herself by making the call.

Then people from the vet’s staff post to this blog, identifying themselves as such, and make more provably false statments, including about my credit. When it’s pointed out that such conduct might be in violation of the law, those posts stop.

Then we have those same people, who are clearly not very bright, saying more stupid things here in a language similar to English but not quite at the high school level. Again they lie, again I prove this.

Meanwhile, other former customers and people in the Roanoke animal community join in with their stories about how bad Brambleton Veterinary Hospital is. It’s pretty impressive, actually, how many people have had rotten experiences with Dr. Linda Jennings.

Then a customer, Diane Whitmore of Roanoke, weighed in, claiming among other things that I was screaming at the staff of Brambleton Veterinary Hospital. I said she was lying. She said her integrity was important to her and she wouldn’t even exaggerate.

So I posted the audio of our interaction and instantly proved she was not telling the truth. So much for her integrity.

The pattern keeps repeating: They lie about me and about what happened, I turn around and prove they’re lying. They move on to trying other lies. Repet.

But I guess they’ve given up and are now simply resorting to childishness: nasty posts with name calling and personal attacks, etc. (I have removed them but saved them.)

Incredible. I have no idea why anyone would trust their animals to Dr. Linda Jennings or anyone at Brambleton Veterinary Hospital here in Roanoke, Virginia.

* * *

All that said, I don’t plan to post any more about it. If they want to add comments, thus driving traffic her and keeping my comments at the top of Google hits, that’s fine by me.

But if they’re smart, they’ll let it go. I don’t have a lot of hope, though.

Comments are closed.

Diane Whitmore, a customer of Brambleton Veterinary Hospital, posted here, among other things, that I was “screaming,” in the vet’s office and that she actually feared for the safety of the staff at the vet. She claimed to work in airline security, and she said that my behavior was the worst she’d ever seen.

Oh really?

Let’s listen in. Here is audio of the last three and a half minutes of my visit to Brambleton Vet. It starts as I’m on the phone with my wife telling her about my conversation with Dr. Linda Jennings.

You can hear my first interaction with Ms. Whitmore at about 49 seconds in.

I would appreciate it if you’d take the time to listen to the whole thing. Ms. Whitmore claimed the following:

As I left he was still in the office screaming and it was severe enough I called back to make sure the techs were OK. I was actually worried about their safety. (Emphasis mine.)

You be the judge. Please tell me if you think that was the case. (The audio ends as I leave the vet’s office.)

Ms. Whitmore claimed that her integrity is very important to her. Let’s put that to the test — compare her post here with what you hear on the audio. That way you can reach your own conclusions about her accuracy and integrity.

(Note: I corrected a typo in this entry on 6/6.)

Comments are closed.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I stopped posting about the horrible experience I had at Brambleton Veterinary Hospital in Roanoke. Yes, there are some things still going on behind the scenes, but I was content to let it go.

Right now, if you Google “Brambleton Vet,” this site (and those that link to it) start in the third position and make up a large portion of links on the first page. I.e., someone searching for information on Dr. Linda Jennings or Brambleton Vet will likely find this.

Had things stayed that way, eventually these posts would have become dated and fallen down the Google hit list. In other words, the best thing for Brambleton Vet would be to let it lie, as I was content to do.

That’s still a good idea. Because every time someone posts here, it just resets the page date and keeps the whole business high on Google.

Something to think about.

Comments are closed.

A co-worker came to me today — he had planned to take his dog to Brambleton Veterinary Hospital and was looking for the phone number when he found my site instead.

Needless to say, he’s chosen to go somewhere else.

But he gave me some interesting info.

Apparently, Dr. Linda Jennings DVM had a previous partner, Linda Eick. After some kind of disagreement (”fight” was his term, but I don’t know if that’s accurate), Eick left to start her own practice: Big Lick Veterinary Service. And Eick is apparently a wonderful vet.

In fact, it can take a while to get an appointment at Big Lick. Ditto for Cave Spring, Roanoke Veterinary, and every other vet in the area.

Except Brambleton Vet. In fact, you’ll probably find that you have no problem getting an appointment there — they have a lot of free time.

We had only gone to one other vet in the area, and only for an emergency, so we had no idea that typical waiting times were longer. Had we realized that Brambleton Veterinary Hospital had much more free time than other local vets, we may have thought twice.

So check this out. “Jackie,” who claimed in one message that she works for Dr. Linda F. Jennings DVM, has been posting other comments using different names.

She posted as “Anonymous” once, and then as “animal lover” in a couple of places.

She’s not very bright. I explained at the beginning that this whole problem resulted from Brambleton Veterinary Hospital’s nasty attitude, and the staff’s refusing to let us take our dog home.

Yet “Jackie” persists in claiming we were trying not to pay.

Well, consider this. Apart from the fact that we were long-time, multiple-animal customers, PJ had a drainage tube in his leg and stitches that had to be removed.

In other words, Jackie dear, we had to come back to the vet. It wouldn’t make sense that we would try to skip out on a bill. (Add to this the simply fact that we paid every bill over the past two or three years that we’d be going there.)

It seems the people at Brambleton Veterinary Hospital are getting pretty desperate. But the cool thing is, comments like Jackie’s … er, “animal lover’s,” just help show a pattern of misinformation and character attacks.

So I went to see my attorney today. It was actually about something else (updating my will to reflect a life-insurance change, if you care), but while I was there I asked whether he handles things like personal/business cases. I also mentioned slander.

Well what do you know, he does. (It’s not his primary practice, but there are other lawyers in the firm if it comes to that.)

I’m not going to say anymore at the moment, but I left the office with a smile on my face and some paperwork in my hand.

(Oh, and for you language nitpickers out there: A lawyer is someone who practices law. When one is representing you, s/he is your attorney.)

We brought PJ to a new vet today to have his stitches checked out. Turns out that Dr. Linda Jennings DVM, or her staff, gave him the wrong dose of medication.

According to our new vet (more soon), PJ should be getting 375 mg of Clavamox, but he was only given 250-mg tablets. And yes, it’s available in 375-mg tablets.

According to Pfizer, the recommended dosage for Clavamox is 6.25 mg/lb. PJ weighs about 60 lbs. Do the math and you get 375 mg.

The vet knew this; the vet tech was very clear that we should give him the 60-lb. dosage of pain meds.

But not only did they give us the wrong dose of medication, the people at Brambleton Veterinary Hospital charged us for the larger dose. (When I get home I’ll snap pictures of the receipt showing that we paid for 375 mg. and the tablets that read 250 mg.)

So let me be clear: The staff at Brambleton Veterinary Hospital in Roanoke, Va., was not only nasty and rude to us, but they gave our dog the wrong dosage of medication.

Good thing we went to another vet.

Update, five minutes later: You know what? As much as I would like to think this happened because the vet was evil or incompetent, I realize that’s probably not the case. Most likely whomever stuffed the pills into the envelope simply grabbed the wrong dosage.

Obviously they knew the correct dose — it was on the bill. It saddens me to say so, but I think this was an honest mistake.

Update, 5 more minutes later: Karen called the vet (!) and the woman who answered, Christina, was friendly and polite and offered to swap out the meds immediately. (I can’t imagine she’ll be working there long. :) 

When Karen told her she was uncomfortable coming to the office, Christina said that she was at the desk and there wouldn’t be a problem. When Karen got there, the office manager saw her and “made a beeline for the back,” Karen said. Christina swapped the meds and we got a receipt to document the error.

Oh, and Karen reports that the office was otherwise empty of customers.

http://www.kantor.com/2007/05/14/avoid-brambleton-…

Dr. Linda Jennings DVM said that I came into her office screaming and cursing her staff. And “Jackie” wrote in one comment that “they were in our office the morning after causing a scene.”

So, to defend myself, I present this brief (52 second) clip of me in the office. This takes place after one member of the staff brought PJ out. Was I angry? You bet. Was my tone harsh? A bit, certainly. Did I curse or abuse anyone? Nope.

But check it out. (MP3 format)

Because current employees of Dr. Linda Jennings posted here to share their impressions of Dr. Jennings, I thought it would be appropriate to share some comments from a former employee of Brambleton Vet. Unlike the current people, she doesn’t have a vested interest in one side or the other.

Jessica asked that I not use her last name. Except for adding paragraph breaks for clarity, I haven’t edited these except as noted.

Her first note:

I actually used to work at the Brambleton Vet. It was my first job out of high school and it was horrific. I knew I would never take an animal there after working there. I had similar things happen with Dr. Jennings. She is very rude and would leave surgery early for a golf game and just hand over responsibility to someone else. I worked there in 2000, so I’m not sure who is still there. Still, I find it hard to believe it has improved much.

She followed up with this:

There was one incident that probably stands out most in my mind that I can share. I worked in the lower level where the kennels were and we bathed, walked, and fed the dogs that came in for an appointment (or were there beeing borded). I remember two of the ladies that worked there and how unpleasant they were.

One day a dog came in for a bath and nail clipping. The woman started cutting his nails and cut the quick right away. He started to bleed and tried to get away, but she just brought over people to help restrain the dog so she could continue to trim his nails, and continue to cut the quick! No one did anything about it and the dog was hollering and barking and crying, bleeding all over the floor. I couldn’t believe she would conitnue and that people were letting her. I said I would go get someone, went upstairs totally distressed, and no one upstairs seemed to care either.

I can’t say whether those people still work there, but in general, I found that the wellbeing of the animals was not addressed consistently. This may have never happened again, but in the time I was there in 2000, I saw many things like this. This, however, stuck out in my mind because it was so distressing to be there, and perhaps I was not immune to the amount of blood. But this was a simple nail trimming and does not call for tough stomach.

She also mentioned some other things she heard about while there, but as I can’t confirm those stories I won’t include them.