​Dear Client,
We wanted to give you an update on the prospective of the clinic reopening its doors to invite clients in for physical exams with their pets.  Although we do not have a definitive date for this, the wheels are in motion and we have started preparing! 

The critical factor for determining when McCauley Animal Clinic will have clients back in the clinic for exams has been awaiting the arrival and administration of COVID vaccines.  Because pet examinations occur in small closed rooms, we have felt it prudent to protect ourselves and our clients during the last year.  Our conviction in the last year with curbside only service has been to maintain full-service and availability for your pet’s healthcare needs as much as possible.   A portion of our staff have already been fully inoculated with the vaccine, another portion have received their first of two booster vaccines, and the remaining portion of critical staff have either an appointment or are awaiting notification of their appointment to receive the vaccine. 

We know and respect that some clients are anxious to hear when they can be with their pets during the examination.  We also know that some clients will continue to want or need to be provided with curbside service—we can inform you at this time that we are happy to continue providing this option indefinitely!
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We appreciate your enduring patience as we work towards a client reintegration date.  You will receive another notification in the next few weeks with a “reopening” date, and details associated with it.  We look forward to welcoming you back into our clinic again with your pets!

Dear clients,
We wanted to send an overdue message to tell you how much you are valued.   We’d like to also purposefully explain our past, present and indefinite future operations during the COVID pandemic.  Eight months after closing our doors to client traffic inside our building, we disappointingly continue to find ourselves in the position of necessitating curbside service.  Because of this unanticipated prolonged curbside service, we think it’s important for our clients to understand our ultimate goals, and the challenges we face as an essential pet healthcare business during the pandemic.
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Our top priority has always been to remain available to treat your pet’s medical needs, both urgent and non-urgent.  If our staff became infected from increased contact with clients inside our facility, it would be devastating because we very likely would be forced to close down.  This closure, even temporarily, would not only affect the livelihood of our staff, but would render us unavailable to treat our client’s pets.  As an essential healthcare business, we do not want to take on this risk that can be reasonably avoided by continuing to see pet’s through curbside service where the staff bring your pet in and out of the clinic, and the majority of communication is over telephone. 

Different businesses in our community are operating in different ways, many allowing little to no restrictions or cautionary measures.  While one business’s protocol may be appropriate and sensible for that particular business, it may not be appropriate for another.  McCauley Animal Clinic, and our veterinary partners in healthcare alike in our community, must however, access things appropriate to our very specific facility and nature of our services.  The logistics of carefully and properly managing multiple clients and their pets at a time in our lobby and exam rooms would be very difficult.  Our clinic, a small, family-owned business, is not a large, corporate structure like Home Depot or Dierberg’s where there’s abundant area to freely move about and safely distance from others.  Additionally, modifying exam rooms in a physical way to ensure contamination prevention would be unreasonable and cost prohibitive. 

Measures taken to improve client service include:

• blocking off more appointment times for urgent care visits
• accepting a greater quantity of drop offs for patients to stay the day in order to have time to examine, diagnose, and treat in between scheduled appointments 
• Hiring more team members to facilitate increased call volume and the increased physical demand of constantly running in and out of the building to get pets and deliver products 
• Two relief veterinarians also serve to help maintain full capacity of service if one of our main veterinarians is absent 
• Three additional phone lines added, and phones installed in several exam rooms to make internal operations more efficient, thus benefiting and expediting client service during exam visits 

Keep in mind that we are physically limited to the number of pets we can take in at any time due to the capacity of cages and runs to house hospitalized and drop off pets.  We are wholeheartedly committed to getting your pet in for urgent matters, but have been faced from time to time with the unfortunate burden of being at maximum physical capacity.  The current challenge upon us will be inclement weather—this will mean less time interacting, and being personable with you at curbside.

The management and associate veterinarians would like to recognize and commend our staff on their continued dedication, patience, focus, flexibility, good spirits and overtime hours in a concerted effort, tirelessly striving for excellent patient and client care and experience.  We are proud to have such a special team of staff who truly enjoy what they do.
Thank you to those clients who have been extremely supportive and patient during the most challenging times, and to those that have sent us special treats and food to help us through some never-ending and tiresome days—we truly appreciate it even if we weren’t able to adequately thank you!

We understand there are many different opinions as to the status of the COVID situation, but feel we must err on the side of caution in order to continue to provide the best and most consistent care for you and your pets.  Therefore, we’ve made the difficult but prudent decision to remain on curbside service indefinitely.  We all look forward to the time we can see you again inside the clinic!
 
Sincerely,
Christie Burris, Practice Manager
Dr. Aaron McCauley, Owner/Veterinarian
Dr. Ira McCauley, Owner/Veterinarian
Dr. Mike Hoffman, Associate Veterinarian
Dr. Michelle Cutt, Associate Veterinarian
Dr. Sarah Bonstead, Associate Veterinarian

      We would like to offer some insight on questions you may have regarding COVID-19 and your beloved pets. Here at McCauley Animal Clinic, we promise to do our best to help answer any inquires, but due to the lack of knowledge we currently have concerning this new virus, please refer to the American Veterinary Medical Association link below for more details. Stay safe folks!