As many of you have found out, 7 year employee Elisabeth has moved to another state to be with her partner. We will greatly miss Elisabeth – not only was her care and tireless work an asset to our facility, we will be miss her as we she was part of our family. When we first hired her 7 years ago, she was shy and unsure of herself; through the years she learned the ins and outs of how to succeed at a busy, sometimes difficult workplace. Most importantly, she left us confident that she can succeed at whatever she sets her mind to. We wish her the best of luck and look forward to seeing her now and again.
Celebrating goodbyes and new opportunities, from right to left: Elias, John, Elisabeth and Dr. Tran
Elisabeth’s departure has resulted in some changes; naturally, everyone in the facility will take on a larger role. Elias will take on most of the “front staff” duties; this means you may get a voicemail answering service more often than we would like during our business hours. Five year employee John will provide additional assistance with pharmacy and treatments. We are depending on our clients' understanding for the adjustments that we will all make. We are also changing some protocols including appointment periods accordingly and other "behind the stage" changes to make the adjustment easier. Our philosophy remains the same: to assure every client that comes in that we are committed to promoting their companion animals’ health and well-being.
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Seemingly continuous postage rate increases (along with what seemed to be worsening delivery problems) along with clients' shift towards email and electronic notices have caused us to shift towards electronic reminder cards for patients, away from the old postage cards. We encourage clients to provide us with an email address (and to notify us when it changes) so that we can email your companions’ postcard reminders. For those of you without an email address, postcards will continue to be mailed out during the later half of the month.
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Some of you may know, we lost one of our own, Elaine, on June 23rd. Elaine was the heart and soul of our clinic. Whenever things weren’t as we would like them to be, she was there to remind us that things weren't so bad. And even when everything was okay she made them better. Her interminable happy attitude is familiar to any dog owner, but the funny quirks that made her her (being afraid of cats, playing games to have her daily teeth brushing, completely happy living in small quarters, etc.) were familiar only to us. Elaine taught all of us here many life lessons that will stay with us for the rest of our lives. I suppose this is the greatest gift she could have possibly given us, and she has done that. Elaine you are in our hearts, forever. We miss you greatly.
Elias' son and Elaine, circa 2002
Elaine, 2015
Change is inevitable, but this doesn’t make it any easier. That said, we remain confident that as we continue to learn about ourselves, about people, about animals, about having to say goodbye and about eternal bonds, we will continue to become better health care providers. An ancient Chinese proverb states "When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills." We'll build windmills.
Elaine, May 17, 2016