Bruce Levine, DVM

Took my Cockatiel to him when I first moved to this area. He took my poor bird to another room to draw blood and the voice of her screaming not only had me in tears but out the door asking what was happening. He said they had a hard time drawing blood on her. He handled my bird in a rather rough manner and I aked that he stop and be gentle, maybe this is why he took her out of the room to draw blood? For two days after she was so stressed she could not perch. This vet wanted me to come in for more blood work on my bird, like heck was that ever going to happen. Contacted UC Davis vet school and they said I might want to take my Tiel to Dr. Nemetz. Dr. Nemetz is an avian only vet. He is expensive but the man is a top bird vet. My birds go there now.
Dr. Levine was a nightmare, I have never had a vet walk out to draw blood on my bird and NEVER have I heard my bird scream like that. Take your bird anywhere but please, PLEASE don’t go to this man. I am lucky my bird didn’t die of stress from what he put her through. In her 19 years I have never seen her that stressed out over blood work.
I also noticed after researching about him after my incident, that he has bounced around from various vet offices, why? Starting to think he might of been let go all these times. My mistake was not researching him before I took my bird there

I have nothing good to say about Dr Levine, except he’s better than Dr Ikeda down in Mission Viejo. Dr Levine supposedly specializes in birds (and other exotics), but when I took my cockatiel to him a few years ago for kind of mild but weird set of symptoms (after having had an absurdly disastrous few visits with Ikeda), Dr Levine snatched my bird from me to take him back for an x-​ray. No «we could talk about an x ray, and here’s what it will be like for the pet». He brings the bird back a few minutes later, and the bird was completely and obviously traumatized with a dime-​sized bald spot on his chest and one on one of his wings that was stripped of feathers and bruised. No explanation.
The x-​ray was inconclusive, so Levine went straight to the discussion about exploratory surgery. Um. Are you SERIOUS. The symptoms, which persist to this day, btw, were alarming to me at the time but they shouldn’t have been to him, the dr. If I remember right, the bird often sounded «clammy» in his voice, and he had trouble eating without doing a sort of gagging response. As it turns out, the new vet believes there is some congenital, mechanical problem with the crop that isn’t dangerous at all. The clamminess mostly went away and anyway it turned out to be nothing important.
If you have too many questions, or if you express concern for your pet’s well-​being, this vet does not offer comforting responses or anything passing for «understanding.» He would prefer you ask no questions and he will mock you if you act sad that your animal doesn’t feel well.
There’s also some story I don’t know all the details of, but the Dr had mentioned many times that his dream job was to work in Hawaii. Not long after I stopped seeing him, preferring instead the vet I consulted with for the surgery second opinion, Dr Levine got that dream job in Honolulu. Some number of months later, he was back in OC, sending out post cards trying to solicit back his old patients. I had heard from friends at a municipal shelter that he was fired from his job in Hawaii. I heard LOTS of very troubling stories from these people, too, about very sad outcomes to other people’s pets after seeking treatment from Dr Levine. PASS.