To our valued clients,
Today’s message contains further thoughts from the clinic team as the situation evolves around COVID-19…
Our initial COVID-19 message to clients and today’s message can be found on our website is at: https://eglintonvet.com/blog/. We will attempt to continue to update clients via email, on Instagram and on Facebook.
Patient care and clinic hours: Due to the public health situation we have made the decision to defer any routine pet visits (i.e. vaccines, spring check ups, etc.) until at least April 6th, when we hope that we will have a better feeling for whether it is appropriate to see multiple clients at the same time.
We are available to see pets who need us due to illness, injury or chronic health conditions and we will also see puppies and kittens who need vaccines to prevent disease outbreaks.
Due to decreased demand, we have adjusted our clinic hours to be open 9am to 6pm Monday through Friday and 9am to 12pm on Saturdays.
We do intend to stay open unless we are forced to close due to staff illness/quarantine or mandated to close by public health officials. If we are forced to stop appointments, we will remain available to act as a pharmacy for medications and food. As of Monday next week, we also hope have the capability for clients to reach us via a new telemedicine platform which will allow clients to chat with a veterinarian or book a phone or video consult. More information on this to follow!
Clinic protocol: Other than critical emergencies and euthanasia appointments we will manage visits to the clinic by having clients remain outside and bring only the pets into the clinic. This is being done to protect our team and all of our clients. We want to do our part to slow the spread of this virus.
If you do arrive at the clinic, please call us from outside or from your car, and we will direct you as to what to do. We plan on bringing most animals into the back of the clinic via our parking lot on Eastbourne Avenue. The veterinarian can then come to discuss their findings and plan with you outdoors. Thank goodness that spring is coming!
Supplies of medication and prescription diets: We receive pet foods, medications and other supplies through a central distributor. Usually our clients can anticipate that their order for something would arrive within 24 hours, but our distributor is working with such a large volume of orders (more of the “panic buying”) that they have warned that our daily order may take many days to arrive. They are also limiting orders of food to 1-2 bags or cases at a time, and we are forced in turn to do the same with what we receive.
On a similar note, we are currently limiting prescriptions to one month of medication at a time to try to ensure that all of our patients have access to the medications which they need.
There are many items on back-order, and we will try to inform clients of this as effectively as we can.
Webstore orders and fun for pets: Visit www.eglintonvet.com and click on the “General Store” to visit our online store.
Many of our clients have signed up to use our EVF General Store to have food and supplies delivered directly to their home or cottage. Our team can help you to walk through the sign-up if necessary. Unfortunately, the limitations set by our distributor noted above still hold when direct orders are placed online and there may be delays in items arriving.
While browsing the online store for essential items, you can also consider buying items to help keep your dogs and cats entertained during the time that we are all inside (although they do love us all being home!) such as toys from CatIt, Chuck It, Kong and Nylabone plus others. Our pets can make us smile at this difficult time!
Important note to dog owners: We know that the current public health situation means that one of the only activities that we can enjoy is walks with our dogs. This is the time of year when we would usually remind clients about the risk of ticks and the need to be using tick prevention products. Although this does not seem important compared to the human health situation, we do want our clients to protect their pets from ticks (and thereby protect humans too!), because we know that the ticks will be out in our local parks. Please call the clinic to purchase your tick prevention. We may limit each request to 1-3 months to save supplies, but further doses can be purchased at your spring visits in April, May and June.
If you are a dog owner and you have used tick prevention in the past but do not have doses remaining, please call the clinic to arrange to pick something up. If you are a dog owner and have never used tick prevention, our team would be happy to walk you through the options.
Spring dog visits: We are currently booking routine spring visits for April 6th or later. Please call us to book your dog’s spring appointment. We are hoping that we are able to proceed with routine appointments as of that date, but everyone can appreciate that we may need to reschedule at some point in the future.
We are wishing all of our clients and furry friends the best of health at this challenging time. Thank you to all of you that have reached out to us with messages of support.
Your pet health team at Eglinton Vet Facilities
