General Policies
Our primary mission is to provide the best quality care possible regardless of budget. Doctor Santos strives to improve quality of life utilizing a variety of treatment modalities. She recognizes that treating an individual’s pet has a huge outcome on the quality of life of both the pet and the owner.
Hours Monday – Friday 7:30AM- 5:00PM
We primarily accept scheduled appointments, drop-off appointments, and house calls. We will also accept walk-in appointments, emergency appointments, and telehealth consults depending on staff availability and situation. Preference is always given to established clients. For the safety of your pet and others, we require that your pet be in a carrier or on a leash at all times. We require that you allow our staff to restrain your pet for their examination.
We ask that you arrive within 10 minutes of your scheduled appointment time. We do not require an exam deposit at this time. However, repeated no show or late cancel appointments will result in a required exam deposit. Due to the time commitment of surgical appointments, we require a $50 surgical appointment deposit at the time of booking. This is refundable if the appointment is canceled or rescheduled with notice. Deposits are often requested for emergency, drop-off, and house call appointments as well.
All pets are required to have a recent exam at the time of booking surgical appointments. All surgical procedures will have an intravenous catheter placed at the doctor’s discretion. Senior pets (7+ years) are required to have preanesthetic blood work performed. The doctor may also require blood work depending on the individual and the surgery to be performed. Regularly scheduled surgeries are required to be up to date on annual vaccines unless illness prevents this.
Dental cleanings are a routinely preformed service that often needs to be performed every 1-2 years. You have the choice to allow or not allow extractions on your pet. We only extract diseased or severely broken teeth. Extracting teeth does incur extra cost and extra time under anesthesia. Performing extractions prevents the need for a second anesthesia to address an existing problem.
Please be aware that there are no staff at the clinic from 5:00 PM- 7:30 AM to monitor your pet. If your pet requires 24 hour hands on care it would be best for them to be hospitalized at an emergency facility.
Code of Conduct
We maintain a respectful discrimination-free environment for pets and their owners. We do not tolerate abusive language or threats to our staff or pets in our care. Depending on the offense you may be given a warning but if it is severe enough we may require you to seek care for your pet elsewhere.
Contagious Illness
We are a fully functioning veterinary hospital. We do our best to keep potentially contagious illnesses isolated and perform a sanitizing protocol any time a contagion is identified. For this reason, we strictly require rabies, distemper-parvo, kennel cough, and feline respiratory vaccinations on boarding, grooming, and surgery pets. External parasites are very common and can cause serious illness for certain pets. If your pet is found to have parasites while staying in our clinic they will be treated for them to prevent spread of illness.
Prescriptions
Prescriptions can only be given to clients who have seen our doctor, physically, in the last 12 months. We carry many common prescriptions in our clinic, but also have an online pharmacy available for less common medications. Due to the intense time required dealing with outside pharmacies we do charge a $5 prescription fee if you choose to take a paper prescription for your medication to another pharmacy.
Return of prescription medications is generally prohibited. We can take the medications as a donation. We are not allowed to take back any controlled substances as donations. Prescription foods (Hills and Royal Canin) can be returned for any reason. Heartworm preventions, flea prevention, and vaccinations have a guarantee of effectiveness but do have certain requirements that must be met.
Estimates
Estimates are made at the clients request. Please do not hesitate to ask for an estimate for ANY procedure. Please note that the amount may not be exact but we will do our best to stay within your budget if we know you have one.
Boarding
Pets may be dropped off for boarding at any time the clinic is open from Monday- Friday 7:30AM-5:00PM. They may be picked up any time the clinic is open and on weekends from 4-5pm ONLY. Boarding is charged by the night plus any additional services that are requested. We offer a 10% discount on both pets if they are boarding, walking and eating together. We require a credit card on file for all our boarding pets in case of last minute changes in pick-up or property damage. We do not accept drop-off or pick-up of any pets on holidays. [New Years Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day]
Grooming
We do not have a professional groomer on staff to perform specialty cuts and breed standard cuts. We will do our best to make your pet hygienic and beautiful. If you require a very specific cut we ask that you go to a professional groomer. Please be aware that mats in your pets hair are painful to brush and painful to cut. Often mats prohibit us from doing long cuts. You can prevent mats by brushing your pet on a regular basis.
Aggressive Pets
We recognize many types and kinds of aggression. We will always do our best to help in any way possible but we must put the safety of staff and other pets first. There are very rare cases where a pet is too aggressive to be handled by our staff or boarded without their owner. If your pet shows this type of aggression it will need to leave the clinic.
Rabies Quarantine
Pets that are required to be housed for rabies quarantine by animal control cannot be walked, handled or visited for the duration of quarantine. They must stay isolated until 10 days exactly has passed. Upon exiting quarantine they will have all annual required vaccinations.