Having had more than a few vet visits this past year I felt fairly confident that this one would be pretty straightforward. Take the 5 animals to the vet, have their chips read and hand in the paperwork to get their pet passports. I should have known better than that at this point but, I am still at times naively optimistic that things are going to be easy.
For starters, I got a little lost on the way there. Part of this was confusing google maps instructions and part was confusing hubby instructions. All of the animals were totally freaked-out by just getting into their crates again and going in the car. It’s been a little bit since we got here so they were, I think, expecting another plane ride. They weren’t pooping themselves and drooling freaking-out (thank God), rather vocally telling me about how freaked-out they were.
So we finally find the place and I cannot figure-out how to get into it. Like many, many businesses here it is in what used to be a house. So there are lots of smallish rooms that have obviously been reconfigured to be used in this capacity. It smelled like the vets offices that I knew at home in Iowa, lots of strong cleaner with a heavy overtone of animal drugs. I even felt like I was stepping back into the 1970’s a bit with the decor and ambiance of the place.
When we finally got into a room, the vet looked like every farm vet I have ever known. Stained shirt, hair in need of a trim, heavy hands with some serious calluses and angry looking cuts, kind eyes and I couldn’t understand half of what he said and for once it wasn’t me not being used to the accent, he mumbled. The dogs needed a shot for something that either we don’t have very commonly in the US or that we just don’t vaccinate for and the cats were totally fine. There was a lot of writing to make up all of the passports and some pretty fun looking stamps. I think that he was fairly impressed with how in order my paperwork was, but it is hard to tell.
I miss our vets at Sheeler Road Animal Hospital. It never felt like the madhouse that this place did even on it’s most busy of days. I also miss having female vets as Meara was pretty freaked-out by a man trying to look at her. I’m just glad that she didn’t bite him. I don’t think that this new vet is the type of place that they would ever remember us no matter how often we were in with the animals…
Sarah Jane Humke 