PAWs and effect

Two weeks ago, Linda Woodward had her dog, Jasper, neutered. Five hours after bringing him home, Woodward realized that something was amiss.

“He started bleeding puddles,” she said. Desperate to find Jasper medical care before things got worse, Woodward punched the number that her veterinarian had listed for after-hour services into her phone. “I called PAW in a panic and was told, ‘We are not an emergency vet.’”

Woodward was directed by the person on the other end of the line to the next-nearest emergency vets, Blue Pearl in Appleton or UW Veterinary Clinic – drives that can take Marathon County residents anywhere from an hour and a half to over two hours.

“I was just shaking,” Woodward said. “Luckily, my daughter had rushed right over when I called her. She called Appleton so I could explain what was going on.”

The vets at the Appleton clinic advised Woodward to ice Jasper’s wound, telling her that he should be fine until morning. After following their advice, Woodward was able to get Jasper in to see his regular vet, and he recovered.

“I told my vet to take [PAW Health Network] off their message for after-hours care,” Woodward said. “My vet said that two weeks earlier, they were still told to list PAW for emergencies.”

“Prior to PAW Health opening, all of the area vets had a rotating schedule for emergency services for our area,” said Jody Michlig, who alerted City Pages to the rash of complaints against PAW Health Network in recent years. “If PAW Health is no longer an emergency vet and all the local vets close at 5pm, what services are available for our local communities?”

PAW Health Network, located in Kronenwetter, has been a staple in Marathon County since its establishment in 2015. Pet care facilities across the region refer their patients to PAW for after-hour, emergency care.

While PAW’s website makes no mention of emergency services, the snippet that appears beneath the site link when googling the clinic advertises, “same day availability, urgency and emergency care.” There are also repeated mentions on the site of being open  24/7, including holidays and weekends.

Amidst a nationwide veterinarian shortage – in which rural Wisconsin has been hit particularly hard – it’s not uncommon for veterinary clinics to cut back their hours based on staff availability. If this is what has led PAW Health to turn away emergency cases, however, then there has been a lack of transparency that has left even those with otherwise positive impressions of the clinic miffed.

“We've gone there with two dogs over the years and thought Paws were perfect! 5 stars,” reads a review on the clinic’s Google listing posted last month under the name Al Johnson. This is followed by a “but…” with three sets of ellipses, then a line break for effect. “Tonight, it would be nice if their answering machine/website would have said they had no vets in for the evening. So that customer(s) did not have to drive there to find out the news.”

In a post dated one year ago on the city of Wausau’s subreddit, r/wausau, user Sweet_Tea_414 reports a “Mosinee emergency vet” refusing to see their injured dog. 

“They refuse to see him because he’s ‘too anxious,’” Sweet_Tea_414’s post reads. “...They have done this with every dog I have ever brought to them.”

One commenter, with the username yurtbeer, advises Sweet_Tea_414 to drive to UW Veterinary Care in Madison if they’re dealing with PAW Network.

“Don’t have time for [the] whole story,” reads yurtbeer’s reply, “but they tried to put our foster dog down saying it could not be saved. UW had to call and demand they release the dog, who made a full recovery.”

Notably, the name PAW Health is never mentioned in the original post, but Sweet_Tea_414 confirms yurtbeer’s suspicion in their next reply, telling yurtbeer that they “ended up driving to Appleton” for emergency veterinary treatment.

These themes recur a lot in discussions of PAW Health, with an increase in similar stories over the past several years.

Google and Better Business Bureau reviews mention long wait times and high bills, neither of which are unusual for a visit to an emergency vet, but both of which compounded additional complaints about the clinic, like perceived inexperience of staff. Several more mention receiving letters from PAW banning them from the clinic after leaving negative reviews online.

A handful of reviewers describe feeling pressured to euthanize their pets, regardless of the severity of the animals’ maladies. 

In an email to City Pages, cat parent Katie Bedwell described a visit to PAW three years ago in which her cat, who had been slated for euthanasia, made a quick recovery after being taken home for the family to say their goodbyes.

“When I arrived home, my cat literally jumped out of the carrier and immediately started running and playing with the other cats. After seeing all those Peaceful Pine bags [in the PAW Health Network office] and the way my cat was acting normal, I decided to hold off on putting her down and wait the extra day for her vet to see her.”

Bedwell’s cat had been diagnosed with kidney failure. When the cat’s regular vet tested her kidneys, their readings had gone back to normal.

“If she really was in kidney failure, she is the one exception that made it out,” Bedwell said. “My cat is still alive and healthy as ever.”

As it stands, amidst PAW Health’s refusal to respond to negative feedback, disgruntled pet owners are spreading their own narratives – and smearing the clinic in reviews and Facebook comments. 

PAW Health Network’s Facebook page was most recently active on Feb. 17 of this year. Prior to that, the page had posted regularly in Oct. 2023. The posts from this time – photos of staff with the hashtag #staffappreciationweek – appear to have had comments limited due to negative feedback.

Negative comments spiked seven weeks ago, following a post by Angie Farrar on Jan. 23 that read, “PAW Health is no longer an emergency vet and can choose which animals to see, so if you show up with a dying dog, they can turn you away… This was our experience. You decide.”

A representative from PAW Health Network declined to respond when reached for comment.