Animal Emergency Centre - Hallam Relocated to VRH 24/7 at 36 Lonsdale St, Dandenong 3175

We visited AEC at Hallam 23/10/18 with our Cat Wally who was not going very well at all. I was confident in the attending Vets abilities, was explained all possible scenarios patiently and with compassion and when the time came to send him to sleep i can only commend the compassion and patience shown to us in one of the most devastating days in my life. We received a follow up card with a paw print and had cremation services all organised on our behalf by this centre. Yes this place is more expensive than your usual vet perhaps but its a 24/7 service and that's to be expected and is fair. Thankyou to the team

If I could, I deduct stars, unfortunately you cannot post without selecting 1. It has been three weeks since we lost our fur kid. I still have the most dreadful guilt in taking him here. There had been other instances, and I swore I would not use these grubs ever again, but what do and you’re regular vet doesn’t have an after hours emergency contact. While I have no issue, accepting after hours costs on consulting, the deliberate vagueness of the staff astounds me. They can do so much onsite tests and exams, charging exorbitant fees, and for all there years of school and training can never give you possible diagnosis or direction.....,I admit we are lucky financially, and wasn’t concerned about the costs, I just wanted some guidance and direction as to what was going on. I really feel for those not in our position, that are taken advantage of by these parasites, and the awful decisions they must, on occasion, be forced to make should they not be able to continue shelling out $$$$$$ for treatment. Every statement leads with, “we did this but it was unclear, we can do this and you’ll be looking at $$$$$” We had to leave our dog Arch, overnight, and I stress, this was done with extreme reluctance, it came down to what was in his best interest, unfortunately it was this place as they had the facilities he may have needed need. We signed a care agreement, which included constant monitoring, and it was repeatedly mentioned, though he was paid up to 11am the next day we could get him 7.30am onwards. He’d remained stable through the night, and we picked him up at 7.30am. For all the “monitoring” that was obviously lacking, when they brought him out, he had a big patch of urine along his side. We had made arrangements to take him to Peninsula Vet Care, Mornington East ( if anyone is in that area they have an emergency department) The reason for going out of area, our regular vet had retired, and I’m not a fan of the new owner. There is just no comparison in the level of service at we all received at PVC. They reviewed what had been done, found he was quite dehydrated ( again, clearly very little monitoring went on) and for the most part were confident of the surgery required, as all other results were great, unfortunately, when they opened him up it was a different story, and sadly he had to be put to sleep. But the level of knowledge and care extended, not just to our boy, but to us, at short notice, was extremely genuine and compassionate. All I can hope from this post, is that I can, help others avoid using this place. If you can take time to find a back up vet, “in the case of an emergency”, independent of this franchise as they are absolute rogues. You could save yourself and your pet a lot of unnecessary heartache.

We visited this hospital last night (not for the first time) with our dog. Whilst in the waiting room I read the reviews of others.To be perfectly honest, I was shocked by what I read. My experiences here have been nothing but amazing.Firstly to be greeted by a lovely friendly lady at the desk, then seen by a knowledgeable nurse and later a super sweet vet who explained everything in detail - costs, treatment, expected outcome etc.I have seen people leaving in tears on occasion when their animals have passed and the staff are so empathetic and caring. I have to wonder if the angry reviews are written during grief with the owner looking to lay blame somewhere.I trust the staff here with my animals and know that if an outcome for my pet is not favourable, it will not be because they didn't do everything in their power to try and help. This emergency treatment of course is expensive so would recommend pet insurance to help with costs.

My family's recent experience with AEC Hallam began on a Sunday when we were presented with extremely limited options to assess our very sick 12 year old Jack Russell, Jackson. Our own vet, open only for 2 hours on Sunday mornings advised the only place to take him was AEC Hallam. We did, and commenced a process that would cover the following four days, cost us just on $10,000 and more importantly the loss of this beautiful little animal. Needless to say there were a combination of concerns with Jack, firstly diagnosed as diabetic and placed on an insulin drip, then pancreatitis diagnosed, and a couple of procedures including an ultra sound, and subsequent cytology on suspicious looking lymph nodes. He was dehydrated on admission and was put on a saline drip. So initial advice from AEC was that his care over 24 hours would cost in the order of $2500. Ultra sound extra, cytology extra, but the estimate initially put to us was that costs would be 'between $600 -$1000 per 12 hours. This, come Tuesday and our mounting anxiety at this cost, magically settled on $800 per 12 hours. But there were extras going on regularly. Each conversation with vet staff indicated some minor progress, or stability, still not eating, but glucose coming down. I visited him on each day of the stay. To cut a long and emotional story short, vet staff sought permission to place a feeding tube in Jacks oesophagus on the Wednesday afternoon to enable them to get some nutrition into him. I gave permission. Feeding was to commence around midnight that night. I received a call on Thursday morning saying there was good and bad news. The good being his diabetic condition had apparently cleared and he wouldn't have to go on ingoing insulin injections for life as initially indicated. He had tolerated food given through the night but.......the bad news was he had suffered some neurological event, possibly a blood clot on his brain ( or perhaps a stroke) and he was clearly damaged by it. couldn't sit and was quite distressed. It was suggested this may resolve over the course of the morning and they would call at lunchtime. Which they did and the news was it hadn't, and it was time to let him go. We all went directly to the Centre and were distressed to see him so clearly struggling and terrified. We quickly moved to have him put to sleep. This is a most emotional process and I have very serious concerns with the manner in which this business operates. Caught in a situation of ending an animals life possibly prematurely, or incurring what I consider to be outrageous charges, you very quickly find yourself in an 'in for a penny, in for a pound ' situation. I know many people, some of them friends, that would have euthanised their pet at the merest hint that it was going to cost upwards $2000 per day. That $10,000 will in fact be closer to $15000 by the time it is paid. I have no issue with the care provided to Jackson by the vet staff. I do have an issue with how 'payment' focussed they are. This is a business model that operates in one of the most emotional environments, and I imagine staff training here includes a very strict regimen of how to ensure payment is received. I have some major issue with the actual charging itself. This $800 per 12 hours covers a variety of routine care processes for an animal that is sleeping much of the time in a cage. I have a copy of the full account and will be asking several vets to assess it's accuracy and veracity. I absolutely could not recommend people make use of this Centre. Shop around, swap vets, whatever, but be extremely careful in the method of assessment. But understand this Centre is all very ok with vaguery and imprecision when advising you what may or may not be wrong with your animal. Probably one of the worst commercial experiences of our lives, coupled with the sheer distress of losing a 12 year old, loved member of your family.

Don't waste your time and money. They are charging extraordinary expensive fee.I almost lost 2k out of my pockets and maybe more for an unnecessary emergency procedures they highly recommended.They used your worry for your pet to get more money out of you.I straight took my dog to Casey Pet emergency and it cost me the consultation fee + antibiotic and guess what my little dog was fine in less than an hour of their care. They only need to clean up the wound and give antibiotic!Not recommended at all!

I attended this clinic with my rabbit who nearly died. She stayed overnight with the vet here, was discharged the next morning and we took her to our vet that afternoon. Our vet said she was amazed and the effort and care they extended to my rabbit, stating that most emergency places will simply keep a rabbit alive until they can go to your own vets as they are not experienced nor have the correct stock and equipment to do what's needed. Our vet said she couldn't praise their work enough and that they had definitely gone above and beyond for my rabbit. For one professional to say these things about another business for no reason impressed me and gave me the assurance of complete honesty.

Please urge everyone to never go to this vet. If you can, go to a different emergency vet such as Casey Pet Emergency. I had the worst experience of my life at this vet and ever since I have been able to speak of my experience all I have heard are other people’s terrible stories involving this vet :(I took my 8 year old English staffy into the vet in the middle of the night as she was dizzy, falling over, drooling and vomiting. I knew something was terribly wrong. We were distraught. We were made to wait in the waiting room for about 3 hours with a lifeless dog lying on us. When the vet finally wanted to bring her in I had to carry her out the back as she wouldn’t let anyone touch her, the vet seemed incredibly hesitant to let me do this and when I went out the back I found out why. Mess everywhere, shaking, terrified and sick dogs tied to the bottom of tables. Barely anyone tending to them. I was disgusted but just wanted my dog to be okay. I went back to the waiting room and waited with no updates for another 3 hours, then we finally got called up the front and we were asked for $800 as we were told that on top of the consultation fee she also received fluids due to dehydration. My dog walked out in the exact same condition that she walked in and they then sent us on our way.We took her home and a couple of hours later in the morning, took her to our normal vet and explained what was happening and the problems we had at Hallam AEC. Our vet examined her and said that there was no possible way our dog had received ANY fluids the few hours before and that she was severely dehydrated, possibly fatally dehydrated. We tried doing everything we could for her but she passed away 2 days later. Our vet said if she had been given fluids that night it could have made a world of difference in the time we would have had to work out the problem and try to make her better.It has taken me a long time to be able to write this review purely because how distraught I have been from this experience but I vow to NEVER go to this vet again and I want to make sure as many people can know about this as possible. I have heard multiple horror stories from other people about this vet. This place needs to be shut down. They are all money hungry and do not care for the sick animals they are making their money off.

My cat Albert spent a couple of nights at AEC Hallam earlier this year, while he recovered from a urinary blockage, and then a perineal urethrostomy, which was performed onsite. The staff were wonderful, Albert was seen promptly and treated professionally and with compassion. I would not hesitate to bring any animal to these guys in the unfortunate event of requiring to.

To all of you at Animal Emergency Care in HallamThank you to all staff members that were involved with our beautiful Border Collie named Marley early Tuesday morning 12.06.18. We thank you for being there when we really needed you at a very, very difficult and extremely sad time. Your compassion and kind words helped us immensely when our beautiful boy was put to sleep. He was a very much loved member of our family, he will be deeply missed.Your sympathy card which we received a couple of days later touch our hearts greatly.You all do an awesome job, keep up the good work :) :)