Sarasota, Florida · March 5–7, 2026
What Happened to Teddy
A family's documented experience at BluePearl Veterinary Hospital, Sarasota.
By Mary Lawlor · Published May 2026
A note before you read
Every fact on this page is documented. The medical records are BluePearl's own. The emails are BluePearl's own. The cremation invoice is BluePearl's own. The clinical summary corroborating what should have happened was written by Dr. Chris Levine, DACVIM — the same external veterinary neurologist BluePearl consulted during Teddy's hospitalization. The same physician on both ends of the consult has now written, in a clinical record, what was recommended and what was withheld.
None of this is speculation. None of it is exaggeration. The documentation is available to anyone who asks.
Meet Teddy
Teddy in aquatic physical therapy, rebuilding strength after his rescue
Teddy is a 2.5-year-old mixed-breed dog — Blackmouth Cur and Rhodesian Ridgeback — and he has already survived more than most dogs ever will.
He was surrendered to the Sarasota Humane Society at 5.5 months old, weighing 15 pounds. He was severely malnourished. We adopted him two weeks later. By then he weighed 32 pounds.
When he was 9 months old, we noticed he walked like an old man after waking up, his back legs seemed weak. We took him to a Physical Therapy Veterinary and found out he had been shot with a pellet gun as a puppy, and the pellet was still in his thigh! How could someone starve a puppy then shoot him because he was barking, “I'm starving!”? My heart ached for the little guy. Teddy spent two months in aquatic physical therapy to rehabilitate the hind leg weakness his early starvation had caused. He worked hard. So did we. And it worked. And despite the odds against him with a terrible early start to his life, this boy was the most loving sweet dispositioned dog we had ever had… he was a little bundle of fun and tons of love!
By March 2026, Teddy was a healthy, happy 2.5-year-old. He had never had a seizure in his life. He had no history of neurological problems of any kind.
Then on the night of March 5, everything changed.
Quick Summary
Our healthy 2.5-year-old dog Teddy was admitted to BluePearl Sarasota with seizures. Within an hour, while Teddy was alive in their hospital and we sat in the waiting room — broken-hearted, frightened, and worried — BluePearl emailed us an invoice for his cremation. (This email was not seen by us until Sunday, after Teddy was home — but it was a gut punch.)
The next afternoon, two veterinary specialists were called on the phone and both gave the same advice: start antibiotics and steroids. The treatment was affordable. We could have done it that afternoon.
But we were never told.
For the next 18 hours, Teddy suffered. His fever climbed to 105.9 degrees. He hadn't slept in over a day. He was disoriented, frothing at the mouth, hyper-sensitive to every sound and touch — symptoms of an adverse reaction to the anti-seizure drug they had put him on and then later increased, completely missing his adverse reaction. And the treatment that would have helped him sat in his medical chart, undelivered to us and unacted on by Dr. Cantrell for 7 hours and by the overnight vet, Dr. Wicinas.
On Saturday morning, a different vet sat down, read the chart, saw what the specialists had recommended, and started the antibiotics and steroids. Within 90 minutes, Teddy fell asleep for the first time in 36 hours.
This page is the story of those 18 hours.
Thursday, March 5 — 11:00 PM
The first visit
We rushed Teddy to BluePearl Veterinary Hospital in Sarasota with seizures, facial twitching and drooling, foaming at the mouth, temporary vision loss, and a fever. The emergency vet on shift, Dr. Kay Wicinas, gave him anti-seizure medication. His seizures stopped. His fever resolved.
I disclosed Teddy's full history to Dr. Wicinas — his rescue background, his hind leg vulnerability, and the fact that his diet included raw meat toppers (raw beef and raw turkey hearts). I specifically asked her whether antibiotics should be started given his presentation. She told me her clinical instinct was to do exactly that.
Then she didn't.
Her own Problem List from that visit lists “meningoencephalitis” as a possibility to rule out. She recognized it. She did not act on it.
We took Teddy home at 3 AM with an anti-seizure prescription to start the next morning.
12:15 AM
The cremation invoice
While Teddy was alive inside BluePearl and we were sitting in the waiting room hoping for good news, BluePearl emailed us an invoice for Teddy's cremation and a paw print keepsake.
Let me say that again. While our dog was alive inside their hospital, they emailed us a bill to cremate him.
I do not have the words for what that felt like. I will not pretend that I do.
Friday, March 6 — 9:15 AM
Back to the ER
At 8:10 AM, Teddy's seizures resumed. We returned to BluePearl. He was readmitted. Dr. Channing Cantrell took over his care. She placed Teddy on a Midazolam IV drip.
Throughout the morning, Teddy began showing classic signs of an adverse drug reaction to the Midazolam — agitation, hyperactivity, extreme restlessness, an inability to sleep, sensitivity to sound and touch.
Dr. Cantrell did not recognize it. According to BluePearl's own medication records, the Midazolam drip was actually increased during her shift.
Increased. Not decreased.
Friday Afternoon
The phone consult that should have saved him
On Friday afternoon, Dr. Cantrell did the right thing: she picked up the phone and called two veterinary neurologists. One was external — Dr. Chris Levine, DACVIM, of Levine Veterinary Neurology in Bradenton. The other was a BluePearl-Tampa staff neurologist.
Both gave her the same recommendation. They told her that if we couldn't or wouldn't pursue the $6,000 MRI and spinal tap workup, the next-best treatment was antibiotics and steroids — specifically clindamycin and dexamethasone.
This is documented in Dr. Cantrell's own notes:
“TTO (Talked to owner) after phone consults both with Dr. Levine and BP-Tampa neurologist. Both concluded that as long as he does not continue to decline clinically, hold off on abx and steroids to ensure best possible CSF sampling.”
In plain language: if Teddy keeps declining, or if the family can't afford the workup, start the antibiotics and steroids.
When Dr. Cantrell called us after that consult, here is what we told her, verbatim: “We just paid you $4,100 to admit Teddy, and the night before we paid $1,700. We don't have the money to do an MRI.”
We had explicitly declined the workup. On the phone. To her.
She did not tell us about the antibiotics and steroids.
She gave us only two options: get the MRI workup done at Dr. Levine's practice that weekend, or at BluePearl-Tampa on Tuesday. We told her again that we could not afford either. She pushed the Tuesday option. She suggested CareCredit financing.
She never said the word “antibiotics.” She never said the word “steroids.” She never said the words “there is another option.”
And then, without telling us, she pre-booked a neurology appointment for Teddy at BluePearl-Tampa. We did not learn this appointment existed until Monday, March 9, when a man named Sean from BluePearl-Tampa left us a voicemail confirming “a hold in their schedule placed by the emergency BluePearl Sarasota location.” The voicemail has been preserved.
Friday Night
The handoff that wasn't
Dr. Cantrell's shift ended at 10 PM. She did not verbally tell Dr. Wicinas — the next vet on shift — about the neurologists' recommendation. The information was in the chart. But she did not flag it during handoff. And Dr. Wicinas should have read Teddy's chart and seen the recommended treatment by two specialists, but she didn't. Or did she? If she read it and chose not to act on it, why? Keep reading.
At 11 PM, Dr. Wicinas recognized Teddy's adverse reaction to Midazolam, immediately halted the medication, and started him on Keppra. I was there and saw Teddy physically begin to calm down. At midnight, Teddy's fever reached 105°F. I was still there with him. Dr. Wicinas did not tell me.
Saturday Morning — 4:00 AM
The drug reaction re-triggered
Dr. Wicinas's overnight assessment list explicitly includes this entry:
“POSSIBLE ADVERSE REACTION TO MIDAZOLAM.”
She wrote that. In her own notes. At around 11 PM.
And then at 4:00–4:30 AM, she administered another large IV dose of Midazolam.
She identified the drug reaction in writing. And then she gave him the drug again.
Saturday Morning — 5:00 AM
Phenobarbital — without asking
At 5 AM, Dr. Wicinas gave Teddy 150mg of phenobarbital intravenously. She did not call us. She did not ask us. She did not tell us. We had discussed this drug the night before, and she and I had agreed it would be detrimental to Teddy's physical health. Dr. Wicinas had said it could make him seem drunk, possibly for several hours and even days. I had told her no — I did not want her to give it to him.
Teddy had not had a documented seizure for over 21 hours. He had the pre-existing hind leg vulnerability I had specifically disclosed at admission. Phenobarbital is a powerful neurological suppressant that exacerbates exactly that kind of vulnerability.
She gave it to him anyway. Without asking us. Against my explicit prior objection.
Saturday Morning — 7:28 AM
She finally calls. I object.
At 7:28 AM — seven and a half hours after Teddy's fever had reached 105°F in their records — Dr. Wicinas finally called me. She told me his fever was now 105.9°F. It was the first I had heard of any of it.
She told me about the Midazolam bolus. She told me about the phenobarbital. I was distraught. I asked her, directly: “Why would you give him Midazolam when you knew he was having an adverse reaction six hours earlier?”
She told me she thought he might be having undetectable micro-seizures.
She tried again to push the MRI and spinal tap. She suggested CareCredit financing. I told her, clearly: “We are not doing an MRI or spinal tap. Period.”
She told me both phenobarbital doses had already been administered — at 5 AM and 7 AM.
That was at 7:28 AM. (My phone bill confirms this call time.)
I was furious with Dr. Wicinas and told her so. I told her emphatically: no more phenobarbital — period. She told me her shift was ending and she was handing Teddy off to Dr. Alya Preston, a Critical Care Specialist, and that Dr. Preston would call me soon. I told Dr. Wicinas I would be there within the hour.
Dr. Wicinas also mentioned she had ordered a stat X-ray an hour or so earlier to check his lungs, because she had heard him cough a couple of times.
Let that sink in. During the 4:00 AM–7:35 AM window — as her shift was nearing its end — Dr. Wicinas, without speaking to me, administered two doses of phenobarbital and ordered a stat X-ray. This despite the fact that before I had left at 12:30 AM, I had told her explicitly: my phone would be by my side throughout the night, and to please call me if there were any concerning changes in Teddy's condition. She did not call. She did not ask. She acted unilaterally, in the final hours of her shift, on a dog whose owner had clearly said no.
When you read the section titled “Shocking — but it explains everything” below, this behavior will look very different.
7:35 AM — Seven minutes after my objection
The medication log discrepancy
BluePearl's own medication records show that the second 150mg dose of phenobarbital was administered at 7:35 AM. Not 7 AM. 7:35 AM. Seven minutes after my call. Seven minutes after I expressed objection to the medications already given.
Her narrative notes say “7am, 130mg.” The official medication log says “7:35A, 150mg.”
Both the time and the dose differ between her own writing and her own system.
The system-generated time is after my call.
Saturday Morning — Shift Change
Dr. Preston reads the chart
When I arrived at BluePearl Saturday morning, I met with Dr. Alya Preston.
Dr. Preston had taken over Teddy's care at shift change. She had read the chart. She had seen the neurologists' recommendation. She had decided, in her own words, to “treat the treatable.”
She had already started Teddy on the antibiotic and steroid — the exact treatment Dr. Cantrell had received from two neurologists 18 hours earlier and had never communicated to me. When I asked her how she had chosen the antibiotic, that was when she told me what both neurologists had recommended — it was right there in Teddy's chart notes.
Within 90 minutes of receiving those medications, Teddy fell asleep for the first time in over 36 hours.
I want to be clear: Dr. Preston was the hero of this story. She read the chart. She made the call. She did her job. The information she acted on was the same information that had been available to two other physicians for 18 hours before her. Same chart. Same hospital. Same protocol. Different decisions.
Dr. Wicinas was in the hospital that morning. She did not acknowledge me.
Saturday Evening
Discharge
Teddy was sent home with dried feces covering his rear end and tail. After nearly $5,900 in charges and a multi-day hospitalization at a Mars Veterinary Health facility, that is the condition my dog came home in.
Saturday night at 8:30 PM, his fever spiked back up to 104°F. I called BluePearl. A technician told me to apply rubbing alcohol to Teddy's paw pads — an outdated and potentially harmful practice. I did not follow that advice. I did my own research.
The Days After
Coming home a different dog
Teddy came home a different dog. He had urinary incontinence. We had to potty train him all over again, from scratch, as if he were a puppy. His hind legs — already vulnerable from his rescue history — would not support him. He was skittish, hypervigilant. For days he did not seem to recognize us. He was traumatized. His vision was affected. I sobbed.
I slept on the couch in the same room with him because he could not be alone, and because I could not bear to be away from him. He was so traumatized I could not even consider leaving him in another room overnight. We pulled out his kennel and had him sleep in it next to our bed; that helped. After a week, we were able to keep the kennel door open so he could choose where to sleep. Our short-haired boy who used to be chilly from the AC, who loved to snuggle under blankets and cruise outside to bask in the sun, was now always hot, panting, constantly thirsty and starving. He lost 8 pounds in the short time at BluePearl — a testament to the extreme trauma he experienced at their hands.
My husband and I both had PTSD immediately after getting Teddy home. I could not shake the visions of visiting Teddy during the 18 hours he had suffered at BluePearl. I had been there with him two or three times during that stretch, not realizing what was happening to him — not knowing yet that an affordable treatment had been recommended and withheld. When I visited, Teddy would calm down. Every time, they told me I couldn't stay long. I didn't listen. I would stay for an hour or longer before leaving. And he stayed in their hospital, suffering, because I trusted that the two doctors tending to him knew what they were doing, that they cared. How wrong I was to trust them.
After we brought him home, the images of him in that hospital — pacing, drooling, frantic with extreme sensitivity to every touch and sound, not sleeping, not knowing why I kept leaving — would not let me sleep. I had left him there. I had left him there over and over again, because that is what you do when your dog is in a hospital. It is heart-wrenching to know now what those hours were and what they did not have to be. He couldn't tell me. He counted on me to protect him, and I failed. I don't want another person to go through the same or worse.
After three weeks under the supervision of Dr. Chris Levine, we weaned Teddy off the anti-seizure meds successfully. We saw small parts of Teddy slowly emerge. Hope returned.
Who is BluePearl really?
Before I tell you what came next, I need to tell you who BluePearl actually is.
BluePearl Veterinary Hospital is not a local clinic. It is one of many veterinary brands owned by Mars Veterinary Health — the veterinary division of Mars, Incorporated, one of the largest privately held companies in the world.
The same Mars that makes M&M's, Snickers, Skittles, and Twix.
The same Mars that owns the pet food brands Pedigree, Iams, Eukanuba, Royal Canin, Cesar, Greenies, and Whiskas.
And through Mars Veterinary Health, the same Mars also owns Banfield Pet Hospital (over 1,000 U.S. locations, most of them inside PetSmart stores), VCA Animal Hospitals (roughly 1,000 more U.S. locations, acquired in 2017 for $9.1 billion), and Antech Diagnostics — the reference laboratory that processed, and then lost, the blood work BluePearl drew from Teddy.
The same parent company owns the food your dog eats, the lab that runs your dog's bloodwork, and the emergency hospital you rush to in the middle of the night. They are answerable to no public shareholders. They are answerable to the Mars family.
That is the scale of who you are dealing with when you walk through BluePearl's doors. And it is the scale of the institution that has so far chosen not to respond to my formal complaint.
Shocking — but it explains everything
After Teddy came home, I couldn't stop asking the same question. How did two veterinarians, with the right treatment recommendation sitting in front of them, choose differently? Why did both doctors choose not to tell us what the next-best treatment was, when they knew the MRI was not financially possible for us? How could a third vet read the same chart and act on it within minutes — while the first two physicians did not act on it for 18 hours?
So I started searching. And here is what I found.
At large corporate veterinary emergency hospitals, paying veterinarians bonuses tied to the bills they generate is industry standard — the more they charge, the more they earn. This is documented in the veterinary industry's own trade publications. It is not a conspiracy theory. It is the standard compensation structure across much of corporate veterinary medicine.
BluePearl uses this compensation model. I confirmed it myself by researching how their physicians are compensated. And once I understood it, the pattern of behavior I witnessed from Dr. Cantrell and Dr. Wicinas became impossible to separate from the financial incentives sitting behind it. I cannot escape the conclusion that their incentive to steer a family toward a $6,000 MRI was significantly greater than their incentive to prescribe antibiotics and steroids that cost a fraction of that. It is devastating.
In the closing hours of her overnight shift, Dr. Wicinas added approximately $1,200 in additional charges to our bill — including a chest X-ray ordered on a dog who had coughed twice, and two doses of phenobarbital administered against my explicit objection. The compensation structure rewards behavior like this. It rewards billing over best treatment. We witnessed it first-hand.
I cannot stop thinking about the incentive structure that sits behind those decisions. And I cannot ignore what it implies.
What I do know is this.
When I arrived at BluePearl on Saturday morning — after Dr. Preston had finally given Teddy the antibiotics and steroids, and Teddy was, for the first time in 36 hours, peaceful — Dr. Wicinas was in the hospital. She saw me arrive. She did not speak to me. She did not make eye contact. She did not acknowledge me in any way.
I do not know how she looks herself in the mirror.
April 25, 2026
The formal complaint
On April 25, 2026, I sent a detailed nine-page formal complaint to BluePearl Veterinary Hospital's Medical Director. I included a timeline, a summary, supporting medical records, and an independent clinical summary from Dr. Chris Levine, DACVIM — the same neurologist BluePearl had consulted during Teddy's hospitalization.
Dr. Levine wrote, in his own clinical record:
“Neurology had recommended initiation of clindamycin and prednisone, though this was not initially communicated; once a criticalist assumed care, midazolam was discontinued, Keppra was continued, and clindamycin and prednisone were initiated, resulting in rapid clinical improvement.”
The same physician on both ends of the consult. The same physician who has now documented, in a clinical record, what was recommended and what was withheld.
I gave BluePearl 10 business days to respond.
April 28 — Roxanne acknowledges
Three days later, Roxanne Gainey, Client Service Manager at BluePearl Sarasota, emailed me. She told me my concerns were being “thoroughly reviewed by our hospital leadership team and medical experts to ensure the most appropriate and comprehensive response.”She said BluePearl would follow up “as soon as we have completed our review.”
I waited.
May 8 — The 10-business-day deadline passes
Silence.
May 11 — I send a follow-up
I gave BluePearl until end of business Wednesday, May 13 to respond.
May 13, 2026
Silence.
Where this goes next
I am filing formal complaints with each of the following:
- The Florida Board of Veterinary Medicine
- The Florida Veterinary Medical Association
- Mars Veterinary Health (BluePearl's corporate parent)
- The Better Business Bureau
I am posting reviews on every platform I can find.
And I am telling you Teddy's story.
Seek a privately owned emergency vet hospital instead
This is not about money. Teddy is home.
This is about the next family that walks into BluePearl Sarasota at midnight with a frightened animal and a credit card.
The next family that gets the cremation invoice while their dog is still alive. The next family that doesn't know that a treatment recommendation has already been made by their own specialists and is sitting in the chart, unread or undelivered.
This is about Teddy too. He cannot speak for himself. So I am speaking for him.
Where Teddy is now
Teddy today — his favorite couch spot
Teddy is recovering. He is not yet sleeping in our bed at night. I get a kiss now and then. He is not fully back. Not yet anyway, but we trust in the Lord — He's been there all along and we know that our love will see him through this season until he is whole.
We are on the final three weeks of weaning him off the steroid. As we reduce the dose, we are seeing more of our Teddy emerge again — the tail wagging, an occasional kiss, the small everyday things that used to be his whole self. The steroid has made him ravenously hungry, which is its own challenge. But the silver lining of that hunger is that he will now eat almost anything. He has always loved steamed green beans. Now he also loves cucumbers, red peppers, hard-boiled eggs, blueberries, and yogurt.
He has good days and better days ahead. He is still our brave, sweet, incredibly loving furbaby!
Whatever else happens — he is loved. And he is home.
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