Overall the hospital is very professional us employees ultimatly very caring and full of concern about your animals. I am an employee and I honestly have no complaint. I'm one of the one who takes care of your animal when the stay for a few nights. We walk, feed, and bathe your animals strictly and try our hardest to keep you and your animal comfortable and happy. To be honest, when we are all caught up, some of us go back to the kennels and just play with the animals. It's gotta suck when your stuck in a cage for most of the day, so we think it's important to give the animals some lovin' once in awhile!!

My family has been with Highlands for over 3 years and Dr. George and his staff are wonderful. I have 3 dogs that they take care of and I use them for all my boarding needs. I recently had my boss take her cat to be put down and George handled it, not only with the utmost professional manner, but with so much compassion for my boss and her beloved cat of 20 yrs!
Please dont take the rantings of a few disgruntled employees. The staff and facilities, have been and always will be first class.
Dr. George is THE most well respected vet in this county and his growing practice speaks for itself

I could go on and on with positive words about Highlands! I have always owned dogs and have used many vets throughout the years, and by far the staff at Highlands --- Dr George, Dr Sigman, Dr Frankenberger, etc --- get my highest praises. In our 7 years of being with them, we always received personalized, attentive service for our dogs.

Having been an employee at highlands I'll tell you that you must keep in mind that not all assistants are cut out to be animal care givers. The good assistants realise their calling and go off to college to become vets or registered vet techs, while the staff that are don't do their jobs well are fired. That is the reason why you find so much worker turn over at highlands. Keep in mind that the bad reviews that old employees give is usually the response of one that wasn't giving the best care to your animal and was fired due the inability to work at the hospital's standards of animal care. As for Dr Jutras, he is one of the best Vet's I've ever met and I trust him with my animals to the utmost. He is also one of the best animal surgeons in Indian River County. The best advice I can give you about Highlands animal hospital is to ask for a tour of their kennels and see for yourself that Highlands really does put the animals first!P.S. Dr Sigman, Frankenburger, and Donaldson are just as wonderful. I'd say so about the other doctors too but i have not worked with them. But if their working at highlands for a long period of time you know that their doing something right.

In my opinion, if you have to use Dr. Jutras,
you'll be better off doing the procedure yourself with the rusty tools in the garage.

Dr. Jutras is a small man driving a large vehicle.
The term Napoleon comes to mind,
negligent control freak is another.
If there are clients in the parking lot, he will whip out his cell phone and pretend he is speaking so no one can complain.
When he goes to meet with a client, he will tell one of the staff to give him 5 minutes and then come into the room for an emergency

I have no direct evidence but the rumor goes that he has no permit nor insurance to board animals, he gets away with this because he can keep observation cases
Sometimes the hospital is so full that crates need to be utilized in the old hospital.
More often than not, there are never enough Assistants to properly care for the animals as Dr Jutras demands everyone be clustered around him to fulfil his need for ultimate control.
The employee turnover there is the worst
I, or anyone else has ever seen.
Many people get fired because they refuse to be abused, many others get fed up and quit.
During the several months I worked there, no less than a hundred employees came and went.
Several of the staff need to drink because of the stress
from working directly with Dr. Jutras.

There is no fire suppression system nor emergency evacuation procedure.
I would not want to imagine the plight of the animals in the event of fire.

Many times he has openly cursed at his staff for not taking responsibility for his negligence.
In a previous comment by another,
I had my Doberman pup spayed by a Dr. Jutris, he said she would do fine. Well a day later and all of the stitches came untied. If you bring your dog in don't let that doctor do the surgury.
This is because he makes a game of getting through his operations as fast as possible, the needs of the animals ar