Animal Referral Hospital ACT, Canberra

I attended ARH on Saturday 8 March 2025 with my dog after being advised to take him immediately for medical attention by the ARH online vet after a consultation. We arrived at 1am, I rang the doorbell seven times over five minutes, but no staff attended to the door. I was eventually let into the waiting area by another pet parent and spent the next hour variously waiting in the waiting room, searching the accessible areas for a staff member, phoning the clinic (no response), and calling out for help to no response. After an hour, given no one had come to triage my dog, I decided that he would be more comfortable at home given he was so unwell. We left at 2am, so one hour of no one bothering to check on the front desk.

I have contacted the vet clinic to advise them of the lack of service but have not had any acknowledgment of the issues I experienced. I can understand if there was some sort of emergency that attending to new patients might not be possible, but they didn't come to triage my dog; imagine attending with your dog who had been hit by a car or bitten by a snake but they didn't check on you and just continued with whatever routine task they were working on? I don't understand how they don't have processes in place to attend to late night presentations, particularly given it is a 24 hour practice.

Duty of care? – Do ARH have a duty of care to animals if you can't afford the excessive charges?