We are still operating curbside for your safety and ours regardless of your or our vaccinations status. We are continuing to follow the guidelines from OVMA on operating and for the next little while have 3 major components to address regarding day to day operations. We need to be able to control what they call the 3 C's. Closed Spaces, Crowded Situations and Close Contact. When patients come for an appointment they are being seen in an examination room which is an enclosed space. To perform an examination that typically requires an assistant (or owner if present) and that would need them to be closer than 6 ft apart. Operating curbside for food and medications allows us to control any crowded situations that would commonly occur in our waiting room area. If we were to start having clients in the building we are being asked to remove the patients from the room and separate from the client for the examination, most times we are having 3 different doctors seeing patients at one time. We cannot safely have 3 animals out of enclosures in the back of our facility and our clients are still not able to be part of that discussion process which means we would need to make a drastic reduction to the number of animals we are able to care for each day. The IPads have allowed clients to part of the entire process, a lot of our clients make comments about how much they enjoy them, and they also take some fun pictures while waiting in their vehicles!
What we continue to ask of you:
- Please call or text the number on our sign when here for appointments and picking up food or medications. We are experiencing a very high volume of calls as are all businesses you have been dealing with during the pandemic. We have made a change to our phone system that will allow a large number of calls to stay in the “que”. Please enjoy our messaging while you are on hold and if prompted to leave a message please do so. You may also call back if you have left a message and have not received a response within 5 minutes.
- Please park in one of our 10 numbered spots to make the process of bringing and receiving the pets and items easier to track by our staff and to keep other spaces in the parking lot available for the other businesses in our busy plaza. We are hoping the handicap space can be left for people that are needing to leave their vehicle for the businesses in the plaza.
- Please call when you are here and parked, do not call to let us know you are on your way to the clinic or at the lights waiting to turn into the plaza, we have a process that works extremely well when it is followed.
- Please be aware we are operating all of our appointments with IPads for video consultations so you can stay in video contact with the doctor throughout the entire process.
- If we have made arrangements with you to be present with your pet in our back area please park in the front and we will let you know when it is clear for you to drive around to the back of the building.
- We will ask for a phone number and name of the person here for the appointment on your arrival, if there are technical difficulties that we sometimes experience with changing weather or busy times in the plaza we will be reaching out to you by phone.
- Please be patient with our staff when we go over the Covid clearance questions, we are in close contact with your pet that is in close contact with you so this is a requirement for us to operate in case we need to be wearing additional PPE once those questions have been answered, answers to these questions will not mean we will not take care of your pet.
- Please be patient when asked to collect payment information. This is done to make the entire appointment process more efficient for you. If you are needing to pay by cash or debit, we will have a contact tracing form for you to complete and sign. To save this step and also to provide you with another payment option we are able to accept e-transfers, we can help you through this process as needed.
- Please request medication refills either by phone or email 24hrs in advance to allow time to receive approval from the doctor and be prepared for you, if needing the medication prior to this time frame please inform us of this at the request time we will do everything possible to be as accommodating as possible.
- Please call or email food requests prior to arrival to ensure we have the food they are looking for in stock, process payment and have everything ready for when they arrive to reduce wait times.
- Please understand animals in the hospital requiring care will always be our priority, as you would expect your pet to be the priority if they were here.
- Please stay in your vehicle. Our parking lot is extremely busy and to avoid congestion and confusion of others seeing people at the front door we are asking people to stay in their vehicles and have us bring the items and pets to them. When people are seen at the door, others think they are able to come in and that pulls the staff away from being able to answer phones which is our main contact at this time.
Please continue to be patient with our staff with these policies as the rest of the province is slowly starting to open up. We are following the OVMA guidelines for the continued safety of our staff and the clients that we are in contact with and help each day. By following these procedures we have been able to stay open, remain on time as much as possible, and not have any closures that have affected various clinics in the region during the pandemic. We know you do not enjoy answering these questions everywhere you go, but it is a process that needs to be followed for us to continue to care for our patients and help our clients.
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Serving St. Catharines and Niagara Region