On April 30, 1990, I opened Garden Ridge Animal Hospital. My ex-husband and I envisioned a free-standing homey small animal hospital where we could be our own bosses, grow a business, raise children, engage in our community, and have a wonderful life. The business succeeded, but the marriage failed in 1997 shortly after the birth of my son, Wayne. Life went on, I met a wonderful man in 2002, we married, and today we are celebrating 15 years of marriage.
Here I am 30 years later, and it has been a wonderful ride. The technology, computers, websites, and medicines, children and my hair color have changed, but the fundamentals of the human-animal bond, examining a pet, doing surgery, and communication with staff and owners are steadfast. The types of patients I have seen has changed slightly over the years, especially since I started seeing exotic pets like rabbits, ferrets, birds, reptiles, and pocket pets (rodents, hedgehogs). The last six weeks have been a crazy period, but we are still open for business. I am missing seeing my clients, many I have known for close to 30 years. I even have two clients I knew before 1990 from the first practice I worked at in Dallas, Hines North Animal Hospital.
I have been blessed with fantastic staff, pet parents, wonderful patients, lots of interesting cases, and social involvement. I have been on the City of Lewisville Animal Control committee several times, serving 6-8 years all together, most recently during the construction of the new Animal Shelter by Railroad Park. I have lead Girl Scout troops, Cub Scout troops, and hosted numerous scouting merit badge events. I have done Career Days at the High School level and Middle School level. I have worked with child daycares for Bite Prevention. We treat classroom pets. We work with pet stores to keep their critters healthy.
Lately, I have gotten involved with the Medical Reserve Corp in Denton, and Ham radio out in East Texas where we have a small cattle ranch and Airbnb lodge. My mom is alive and well, but cannot drive, so we do a weekly “lunch”, and run errands. And I get to enjoy my granddaughter in Flower Mound!
Achievements:
AAHA certification since 2006
Fear Free Certification since 2017
Best Animal Hospital People Choice Award
Best Landscaping award in 1995
I had hoped to do something special for the 30th anniversary. Something like a big open house, or a big 30% off sale, but that is not going to happen during the time of the Coronavirus. Maybe I will just have to do it for the 31st anniversary!
I hope to see ya’ll soon! Stay safe. Hug your pets.
Category: My thoughts
#39 The Year in Review
2017 was another full year for Garden Ridge Animal Hospital. We made a commitment to be trained in Fear Free Pet techniques https://fearfreepets.com/, and then started implementing them in everything we do. It has really changed my patient handling philosophy by striving for a less scaring, more fun experience for our patients, and ultimately their owners. Most of the time we use treats and toys, but sometimes we add antianxiety medicine. This dovetailed well with my prior interest in behavior cases.
We commissioned a new logo that reflects the diverse species that I see (dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, reptiles, pocket pets). You can see it at the top of the Home Page. And I started this Blog. I have written ~ 1/week since February. Up to now, I have just posted in on my veterinary business website, gardenridgevet.com, but I have just launched a real Blogging website (HERE) , so clients can subscribe and recommend it to their friends. Drpamdvmblog.com.
We watched KC’s pug puppy, Eloise, grow up. She just had a birthday. It has been pure joy playing with someone else’s puppy.
After Hurricane Harvey, we fostered 3 dogs and 4 cats for the Houston ASPCA. 2 of our fosters were reunited with their families, one was adopted by a client, and the rest were returned in Houston In November to find homes locally.
This fall we lost 2 experienced nurses, Christian and Sandi. They moved on to other small animal practices in other cities. We hired Charli, our youngest receptionist/room technician, and moved KC up to full nurse. Charli came here from Louisiana where she worked for several years at a vet practice in Baton Rouge. Monica, our groomer, has pulled some receptionist shifts when KC broke her arm this fall, which is healing up nicely.
On a personal note, my husband and I took a long car trip with the Dallas Model A Ford Club to Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Glacier National Parks. We were gone 2 weeks, saw these national treasures from vintage cars, and took lots of pictures. I wrote an article for the national Model A Ford magazine, The Restorer, and anticipate my cover shot and article will be in the January 2018 issue. If so, it will be my 3rd cover shot and 3rd article.
My husband and I also have some property in East Texas, and have just remodeled a 3 bedroom cabin from a Quilting Retreat to a weekend family/wedding country cabin. The website isn’t up yet, but the Facebook business page is, under Highland Lake Lodge.
#38 Christmases Past
Blog # 38 Christmas stories- Dec 21, 2017
I like to reminisce this time of year of past Christmases.
When I first got out of vet school in 1982, I worked at busy 3 doctor AAHA hospital in Dallas on Harry Hines called Hines North Animal Hospital. We did a big boarding business since the building was older, had grandfathered outdoor runs, and there were few boarding facilities back in the 1980s. We would roll in banks of cages into all the back halls and cubbies, housing ~ 150 dogs and cats between Christmas and New Year’s. Doctors were expected to work on Christmas day to help administer all the medications and supervise the high school kennel staff. We usually helped clean cages so we could get home sooner. The noise was deafening sometimes (not to mention the smell). I didn’t have kids yet, so it wasn’t a huge imposition. I can’t imagine any vet boarding 150 pets at the holidays now.
I worked at Metroplex (the 24 hour animal hospital) in Irving in 1989 while we were building Garden Ridge as one of the night doctors. We worked 13 hour shifts, and that year I had just worked 3 of those shifts, got off at 7 am, and then tried to stay awake for the family festivities. I think I fell asleep during the dinner. I looked so sleepy in all the pictures!
When I first opened Garden Ridge Animal Hospital in 1990, we only boarded 20-25 dogs and cats, but no one really wanted to work Christmas morning. My solution was to have EVERYONE work, and we could get it all done in an hour. To make it more festive, I usually made a blueberry coffee cake and fancy coffee/hot chocolate for the staff. My daughter was 2 when we opened, and I doubt she remembers going to the hospital BEFORE opening presents.
One special Christmas, we were boarding a pregnant Husky. She delivered her 8 pups sometime during Christmas Eve night, and we were welcomed the next morning with 8 Christmas pups! It was our little Christmas miracle.
Christmas is still a special time, but the kids are grown, the boarding isn’t as crazy, and I don’t have to work on that day anymore. I kind of like modern Christmases.
#37 Computers and veterinary medicine- Dec 14, 2017
One of the many things that I proud about Garden Ridge Animal Hospital is that we are computerized, “paper free” (almost), and have been since 1990. We started off using Apple Macintosh, and switched to Windows in 1997 when I got divorced from my Apple programming ex-husband. I was lucky to find a small company that does Veterinary Practice Manager Software and could write the custom program to import all the Mac data into Windows, no nothing was lost. Here it is 20 years later and I am still using that company.
I love computerized records. I can easily pull up a patient’s medical notes, at any computer, and in seconds I have all the data, instead of hunting down a paper file. I can easily see all the diagnoses, medicines, food, reactions at a glance. I can type a prescription label for Fido while in the exam room, print it in the pharmacy, and have a nurse fill it without me leaving the room! It is easy to set a recall to check up on Fluffy. But the biggest plus is all that data is backed up every night to 3 places. Backups are wonderful, and rarely have we had to use them when hard drives fail. Knock on wood.
Last week I had the misfortune to have a hard drive fail on the dedicated computer that runs the business side (emails, Quick books, etc.). It was NOT the medical side. I was flummoxed to say the least. I had to keep telling myself that there were ways around not having the financial and email data while the computer was being replaced. And since I back up religiously, my data wasn’t really “lost”. But it has been a pain to look up the dozens of passwords to log onto websites, banks, vendors, email accounts.
My computer is now replaced, working again, and life goes on. I didn’t want to think of myself as one of those “addicted” to technology, but it sure makes life easier when you can just log on and it remembers all those accounts and passwords.
What does this have to do with veterinary medicine? It is my promise to my clients that their data and their pet’s data are safe and backed up 3 ways. And if you ever travel, move, or seek specialty referral, it is uber easy for us to email them or print them out.
As we move into 2018, we may be asking if you would like to share an email or phone number to receive texts instead of postcard reminders. We tried this a few years ago, and most people didn’t want to share their email. But times keep changing, and we have many ways to reach out to our pet parents. So please don’t be offended if we ask you again about emails and phone numbers. We aren’t selling them. We just want to reach you in the format you would prefer to be contacted in.