This is a copy of my article I wrote for the June 2008 edition of the SE Examiner. Please post comments with questions, comments on how you keep your pets cool, and suggestions for upcoming articles! I look forward to hearing from you.

With that glimpse of summer we had I started to realize that once again we need to prepare our pets for the hot weather ahead and there are some very unique ways to help keep your pet cool this summer. 

Seso cooling off at Lake Takhlakh summer 2006

The obvious ways, of course, are to keep your house cool while your pet stays at home. Closing blinds and running fans, or, if you have it, keeping your air conditioning set to 74 degrees F are some good ways to keep your home cooled for your pets. Leave plenty of cool open floor space for your dog to lay on, or if your basement is safe, you could put your pets down there for the day as it’s often times much cooler down there. Or consider these great Canine Cooler beds that you can be special ordered from your local pet store or purchased on line. The unique water cooled system keeps your pet cool while giving a nice cushion to lay on rather than the hard floor. Be sure to fill the bed in the place you want to leave it – they get heavy when filled. I bet cats would even enjoy them (don’t tell them what they’re called). 

Kitty drinking from a Drinkwell fountain

Cats and dogs cool themselves by panting and less productively through their footpads. Leaving cold water to drink, with ice cubes in it can give pets the opportunity to drink cold water to help keep cool. Cats are more tricky than dogs and have very individual preferences on how they like their water. Some cats love water out of the tap if your cat fits this category, let the water get cold and offer your cat a drink. If your cat only likes her water in a full cup at the bathroom sink then be sure to fill it often with cold water (use the excess to water indoor plants) and you can even try adding an ice cube or two.

Yummy Peanut Butter Frosty Paws

Keeping pets hydrated and cool at the same time is important in hot weather. If your pet is doesn’t like to drink a lot of water, try flavoring it. Use low sodium chicken broth, clam juice, tuna water or your pet’s favorite flavor. You can even freeze the flavored water into ice cubes for a crunchy popsicle treat to help them cool down. If your pet doesn’t like the popsicles, there are other ways to add moisture to diets to keep them hydrated – you can water down the dry kibble food and this works well for dogs that meal feed or you can offer canned food which always has a higher moisture content. You could even add a little water to the canned food but be careful with cats, they are highly particular on the mouth feel of their food and may not eat a watered down version. If you want to get really gourmet, why not add the flavored water to the dry or canned food? One last idea about canned food is to fill a Kong toy with canned food and put it in the freezer to make a tasty cool treat that can also occupy your dog for awhile to take his mind off of the heat. For cats you can freeze canned food into small ice cube trays and try those as a treat. There are other commercially available “ice cream” treats available for dogs (but I bet cats would enjoy them too) called Frosty Paws. They come in small containers like the sundaes that we used to get as kids. You pull off of the top and give it to your dog, maybe take a small scoop out for the cat first, and let them lick it out of the container. If your dog is the type that would EAT the container, you may want to scoop it into a bowl first. My dog loves these and they are available right in our neighborhood at Zupans and New Seasons.  

I am very honored that I have been invited to speak at a Women's Veterinary Retreat in Bend this weekend. I will be discussing the topic of starting up a practice with two friends, Dr. Tracy Thompson of East Padden Animal Hospital (open) and Dr. Nancy Curran of Two Rivers Veterinary Clinic (opening this summer). It's going to be an exciting event. I actually attended a similar retreat 3 years ago and found it to be an amazing connection between women veterinary practice owners and associates who may someday want to be practice owners. And lnow here I am going back to speak as a practice owner! I will be out of town for the weekend and have my wonderful friend, and very skilled relief veterinarian, Dr. Alison Lord watching the practice for me Friday May 30th and Saturday May 31st. Daniela and Katie will be there too, of course, to answer any of your questions, schedule appointments and help Dr. Lord with any pets that need our assistance. I will be back in the office for a normal work week on Tuesday, June 2nd at 10am.

Smith Rock near Bend, Oregon

Open House June 14th! We are very excited to invite all of you to our open house so you can see the fruits of all of the hard work that you've been reading about here on Ready, Vet, Go! Come check out the chandelier. Or maybe your favorite story was about the vessel sink that we aquired last minute for inspection when our original red one was without certification! Or how about those carpet tiles - are they really tiles? Our public Open House is from 3-6pm and we are having a private Industry Party from 6-8pm. I hope you can attend - it will be so great to see you all and meet those of you in person that have been following our progress. All pets and people are welcome!

We've been blogged about! Check out the posting from Cheryl Janis about her visit to our clinic with her sweet kitty, Baby on her site Planet Pink n Green. 

Well, it was another one of those late nights at the clinic. (Yes, the post is right 1:05 AM!) The kind of late night where I forget to eat dinner and have to bargain with the poodle for a few extra minutes (over and over again). Luckily, she is very resiliant and will nap for long periods of time before she asks to go home again.

This time it was a marathon painting session of the back room where our dog kennels, oxygen and nitrogen, server room and general storage are. It's a small enough room to make it fun. The stakes are also pretty low since it's storage but it is a part of the hospital we spend some time in so I wanted it to look nice and finished. My friend Cheryl Janis (interior decorator, feng shui consultant and Editor in Chief of Planet Pink n Green) came to the clinic on Friday for a decorating help session. She already helped pick the colors and the furniture and consulted with us on the design of the clinic and it was great to have her over for some finishing touches. She single handedly rearranged the living room (waiting area) furniture and, using everything I had already placed in the room,  made the room so much more inviting - amazing! We walked through the clinic taking notes on what the space could use when we came to the back area (which I just wanted to wave my hand at and move on to the good stuff but she lingered). Cheryl asked questions about how we were planning to use the space. She talked about the Feng Shui areas of fame and relationship/love which are combined in our back space and offered suggestions for decorating and making it a vibrant space. Number one - finish the space.

Hence the marathon painting session. I finished most of the room in Devine Almond to match the Digital Radiography Suite. Cheryl explained that pink is a great color to use in the love/relationship area of a space but I was bound and determined to use only the colors I had on hand. My first thought was to to use the Aura Wisteria which is a lavender color - close enough to pink, right? When I was looking for the Wisteria, I remembered the Devine Peaches and Beans that we used in the bathroom! Perfect - that color is so happy and it really brightened up the space and peach is definitely close to pink! I painted it on the main wall in the back and then decided to use it for Mr. Oxygen and Mrs. Nitrogen's house (see Michael's earlier post on requirements for passing final inspection!). The floor in that room and the DR Suite is black and we decided to paint the ceiling black to match. Oooooh, the Peaches and Beans looks so awesome with the black!

Black paint freckles!

I had already painted the DR ceiling on friday (that was quite an adventure!) First of all, I didn't bring a hat and was a little worried about getting black paint in my hair. But, being ever resourceful, I grabbed a surgical bouffant cap and wore it for protection - perfect. Then I encountered another snag when I started to warm up with all of that overhead work I was doing. I was wearing my usual painting clothes except I had a nice t shirt on under my painting fleece. I was getting hot and wanted to take the fleece off but I didn't want paint on my t shirt. Picture this: me in my paint splattered overalls, stripped down to my camisole, and wearing a bouffant surgical cap. Thank goodness there were no cameras present. I did the same cap trick tonight but this time I remembered to wear the paint splattered t shirt. I did take some self portraits for this post (sans surgical cap) for your entertainment. Michael is out of town and would have done a much better job at capturing the black splatters on my face but these will have to do. 

Painting overalls, painting shoes and messy hand

I've been getting a lot of requests lately for more pictures of the clinic. We'll get there, I promise but there are still some finishing touches to add before it's photo ready. Michael's photographs do capture the space well but it's nothing like seeing it in person. So we'd like to invite you come by and tour the new clinic! Saturday June 14th is our big Open House. From 3pm-6pm is the general public open house and from 6pm-8pm is the private veterinary industry open house. I hope you all can come and check out the hard work you've been reading about - I know you're curious! It will be a lot of fun!

Carpet gives the room a warm feel

When I was first talking to people about my vision for the practice whenever I mentioned that I was using carpet as my flooring, I got a lot of "you'll be sorries", rolled eyes and just plain crazy looks. I had never seen a clinic with carpet before but then again, I wasn't going for anything that I had seen before. I wanted a comfortable space for pets and people and carpet adds an extra layer of comfort. Dogs are so much more stable on carpet and it really gives a warmer feeling to the rooms. The carpet I picked is a beautiful leaf pattern in brown called "All About Me" by Mannington carpets. They are carpet tiles and are really durable. You can even bleach them! Josh over at Floor Solutions helped us pick out the right carpet, got me samples in all of the colors I wanted to check out and finally helped with my order. He's been great!

Sam feeling much better

Once we put the carpet tiles in the rooms looked amazing. These tiles go on with an adhesive that holds the tiles in place but allows you to remove individual tiles for cleaning - a feauture I figured would come in handy and well, it did! This past week we saw a sick puppy named Sam. Sam had been having diarrhea and not feeling well. Turns out his diagnosis was Giardia which can cause some pretty yucky diarrhea. Sam had some diarrhea on the way in out at the curb and we were making arrangements to go collect the sample when all of a sudden poor Sam just had to go! He picked a centrally located carpet tile and deficated. It was soft and stinky and there was even blood in it. Well, we got our fresh sample and I proceeded to pull up the carpet tile, replace it with a clean one and rinse off the dirty one. It worked like a charm and Sam was nice enough to keep it isolated to one square.

Me cleaning the carpet tile - it's so easy!

Thank you Sam for testing out our carpet and we are so happy to hear that you are feeling better!

It's been a fun week, beginning with the inspector coming in and signing off on our final! What a great opening day gift...really the only way we could open our doors. So officially we opened the doors a week ago in the afternoon once the inspector left. We received lots of phone calls that day and had so many people stopping by to wish us well.

Beautiful flowers on our reception counter

I'd like to take a moment here to thank everyone for their kind comments on the blog, congratulating us and wishing us well. I'd also like to thank the people that have stopped by to tour the practice and for their lovely compliments and the friends and family that have sent flowers and cards full of congratulations and good lucks! It has been an overwhelming outpouring of support and I can't thank you all enough.

Organic irises

It has been exciting to have the doors open and people scheduling appointments. Seeing pets in the practice has really given the space the extra dimension that it needed. We have been educating clients, taking care of the pets in the room with their families present - I always thought it was a little strange to take pets away from their families. When I was a freshman in vet school, I brought my dog, Seso in for a visit and they were going to take her to the back to draw blood. Like I said, I was in vetschool and I had worked in a veterinary office for years. Oh, and I have the personality to speak up...so when they were going to take her back, I simply said no. Probably a little strange back in 1992 but I held her for them and she was perfect. The mystery of what happens when the pets go to "the back" shouldn't be an issue in a trusted veterinary practice. We've demystified the process by inviting clients to be present. Even if we must go to the treatment room for a messier procedure, they can come with. The pets are calmer and it gives us an extra opportunity to teach and converse. Katie, our veterinary nurse, is very kind and skilled and is an excellent teacher for clients looking for hints on nail trimming or even medical procedures like injections. For those in the veterinary field that are mildly horrified by the concept of performing treatments in front of clients - I should tell you that we even drew blood from a kitten and with the help of her family did so with little trauma. If you have never had the opportunity to experience collecting blood from a kitten, it's not easy. They are not easily distracted, they hate being held still,  and they cry during the procedure. We used all of our tricks - we twirled the kitten around, used babyfood for distraction - which she liked and ate the whole time (but still cried), and used some mild tapping/shaking. She was good (but still cried) and reached her limit right when we finished. With a little "good kitty", petting and more babyfood and she was good to go. 

Red and DeeDee on the waiting room couch, supervising our hard work

We're still working out some kinks and still decorating, putting up baseboards, organizing, getting signage, ordering and figuring out our flow but we're getting there and enjoying every moment! Sometimes we're even there late until 2 am! Please feel free to come by for a tour or schedule an appointment with our wonderful client coordinator, Daniela.

Thank you all for such a great week and we're looking forward to meeting all of you and your wonderful furry families. 

yeehah!!!

We had a minor complication with the inspector today involving something the Fire Marshall already signed off on, then he sort of shrugged it off, and said "want me to sign the final on this?" - do you think anyone ever answers that question in any other way than a booming and emphatic YES?!?! That's what I did anyway, so he signed it, wished us luck, and disappeared. So, as of 3pm today, we were officially OPEN FOR BUSINESS!

We can barely use the phone system, the software's not ready, the shelves are empty, the credit card processing machine just showed up this morning, we still need to put up the door trim and baseboards. But the phones have been ringing - lots of existing clients, and even a couple new ones already. We've got six appointments scheduled for tomorrow already, and a few surgeries on Friday! So, despite having a lot to do still, we're open, and we already have a little momentum, which feels great!

Sorry this didn't get posted until so late, I know some of you were dying to know how it turned out - but we're just getting home now, and I still need to rig up some temporary patch so we can produce statements for clients tomorrow when we charge them. So I've got to get back to work, just thought we'd share the news.

CLICK HERE for a nice big image of our completed inspection card :)

Well, one final (?) gripe about the permitting process, then you won't have to listen to me whine anymore.

As Kristin mentioned, JUST LAST WEEK we heard that our modest little oxygen tank requires its own sprinkler, and a vent, and a fresh air supply, and a 1-hour fire rated enclosure. Yes, just LAST WEEK - after months of permitting, reviews, discussions, phone calls, emails, inspections, and corrections... someone just finally figured this out.

Well, we got that sorted out - it turns out we don't really need all that - just a separate "room" for our oxygen. Apparently nobody at the city bothers actually READING the code, so I have to do that for them. I think maybe they sort of *glance* across the pages, see the word "sprinkler" in there somewhere, and make the rest up. I'm serious. And since they don't even read the code, I'm hoping they don't read this blog either. Or if they do, I'm betting they won't see it between the time I post this and the time they sign the card tomorrow morning. They can read it all they please after that :)

So anyway we built a tiny little wall, with a steel door on it, and the Fire Marshall came out today and, after scaring me with a couple new suggestions, said he'd sign off on it as it is... and there was much rejoicing (hooray!)

We also got our final approval on our mechanical permit today... additional rejoicing ensued (hooray again!)

So all that's left is to get the final inspection completed - last time he was out, in addition to the oxygen tank incident, he pointed out that we needed a smoke gasket on the back door, and a door closer... fair enough. I put those in, and called him back. Hopefully when he comes out tomorrow, he'll just nod and sign the card... then I'll scan it and post it here in victory... wish us luck!

Also - the REAL website has been released! All this blog activity is groovy and all, but we need a general-purpose sort of site. It's not all final, or perfectly functional (the record-access parts aren't hooked up yet) but it's generally all there, and looking pretty nice thanks to a spectacular design by Lia at Avive Design, some excellent copy written by Kristin, and some mediocre photos by YT (no Drew, not the girl from snowcrash).

So, go check it out by clicking on the "Mt. Tabor Vet Care Home" link on the top of this page... or in case that one's too subtle for you, here's a more conspicuous one...

http://www.mttaborvetcare.com

let us know what you think! You can also check out the "Portland Picks" website - we're running an ad there all month on the lefthand side of the front page.

starting to look like a genuinely official place of business, is it not?

Wow! Things are incredibly crazy around here and in such a good way it's hard to complain. As an example let me just tell you that I woke up really early this morning for our trial surgery day with a planned 4 surgeries and two added on. Michael got home and into bed right as my alarm went off at 5:30am. We've been pulling a crazy schedule to get these things done but it does look like we'll make our Crepes Suzette opening day!

Our beautiful new sink

Ok, to start with we had our final plumbing inspection last week and I did not have any verification that the sink had been certified. Apparently sinks can be made all over the world, especially China and are not certified for safety. NOT ok in a business. We emailed the company we got it from who emailed the supplier and no licensing or certification. I had a hard time finding that sink and now I was faced with finding another. Not only did it have to be certified, it had to be the right size to fit the faucet that was already on the wall AND it had to be in stock locally because we wanted the plumbing inspection in 2 days in the morning so the final inspection could be that same afternoon! Talk about pressure. Well, I went around a few places and was having trouble finding anything. Finally I remembered A Ball on W. Burnside near where we used to live. They were so wonderful there. She had 4 certified vessel sinks in stock and started telling me the colors over the phone. When she got to gold...I rushed right over! The size was perfect - even better than the red sink and I must tell you, it looks great! (Even better than the red sink!) So it was put in the next day and we passed plumbing inspection the following day. Whew!

Then it was final inspection a few hours later. Our same framing inspector came out (the one that wanted us to insulate over our beautiful exposed fire brick!)  Well, it was interesting. There were some pretty big scary moments around our oxygen tank. There were all sorts of safety precautions they were talking about us putting in. A single sprinkler run to the back, venting the space - that would have been impossible! We'd have to go through 2 floors or into someone's backyard and we would not be opening anytime soon! Luckily, our Hazards inspector got things straight and we don't need to do the sprinkler or the venting but for some reason, unlike any other veterinary hospital in the area, we need to build a room for the oxygen and nitrogen tanks. It really is the best of all of the options for us and our framer, Derek built the room yesterday with a fire rated door. It looks really funny - we're talking about putting a welcome mat in front of the door.

Puddy - our first surgical patient!

And then, my friends, there was the trial surgery day I was talking about earlier. What a day! Not only passing my husband like ships in the...well...morning but not even anticipating all of the craziness that could happen that day. Both Katie, our veterinary nurse, and I arrived early. She got to the clinic at 6:30am because we were expecting an emergency early shipment of our pain medication and anesthetics that wouldn't be there until later in the afternoon originally. Ok, I did order everything in advance BUT things got a little weird at corporate because my originally shipping address for the distributor was to my home. A big no-no for controlled drugs! They had been sending all of my things lately to the clinic so how should I know that I needed to check on that?! Anyway, they came early. Our kitty patients had stayed the night and were there. We went to get started and realized that I forgot to order the preanesthetic profiles we needed to run bloodwork on them ahead of time. Oh yeah, no artifical tears either and the sterile water for the antibiotics (if we needed them) was on back order. There were other issues that I just can't bore you with right now. I took a trip over to visit my friends at Rose City Veterinary Hospital and they were nice enough to loan us some things. Granted, I didn't know about the eye ointment at that time and needed to take another of many trips out to Walgreen's. (I'm on a first name basis there now!). While at Rose City I picked up 2 more strays that needed spaying and neutering - that is 6 surgeries total on a day when we were discovering we didn't have everything that we needed!

To make a long story short, we ended up doing 3 of the surgeries and will pick up the rest next week. We definitely were ambitious even with the 4! Between using new equipment and discovering the things we needed and didn't have it was a long day with just doing 1/2 of them! But I can tell you, for as stressful as it was we are all grateful to have had this trial run with these shelter animals - they received services for free and we got the chance to run through our surgery protocols before we open. 

Friday we are doing a trial appointment day with friends and family and final inspection should be the day before we open! - I'll keep you posted.