After Care

While we do our best to keep same day appointments available it is not always possible. We offer appointments on a first come first serve basis and return all calls/voicemails in the order they are received. We do frequently have cancellations and we always recommend calling even if you are looking for an appointment same day. Generally we recommend giving us 2 to 3 days notice to schedule an appointment. Appointments do tend to fill up faster around weekends and holidays.

We do allow you to cancel or postpone your appointment if needed. Should you schedule an appointment and decide that the timing is not right we do allow you to cancel or postpone the appointment and receive a full refund. We do kindly ask for 24 hours notice to cancel or post-pone. We understand this is a difficult time and will do our best to help. 24 hours notice allows us to make your appointment available to a family and pet who urgently need it. If the appointment is canceled after the Doctor arrives at your home or after the daily drive schedule is finalized a house call fee or cancellation fee may apply.

We work with Loving Paws Pet Loss Center, a local cremation company specializing in aquamation. While we work with them daily and are in frequent communication with them, they are a separate company. We will inform them when you schedule the appointment of the time of your appointment. Normally they will arrive at your home prior to our Doctor leaving or within 15 minutes after our Doctor leaves. Occasionally if there are multiple doctors seeing appointments at one time, if the cremation service has another pick up, or if there are excessively long drive times/traffic there may be a longer wait for pickup. If we anticipate a wait longer than 15 minutes we will let you know ahead of time. Occasionally wait times for pickup can be approximately two hours, however, this is very rare. If you have questions or concerns regarding this please let us know. We do work closely with the cremation company and do our best to make sure that things flow as smoothly as possible.

We work with Loving Paws Pet Loss Center for cremation. They will bring in a stretcher and place your pet on a stretcher. They will gently wrap your pet in a blanket. For smaller pets, they will bring in a small pet bed and a blanket. No body bags are used with our service. The cremation company is comfortably able to lift pets weighing 60 pounds and less without any assistance. If your pet weighs more than 60 pounds assistance for the cremation company will be needed. If you are comfortable, helping the cremation service with your pet please let us know. If not a second person can be arranged for help with cremation pick-up. A fee for a second person may be charged. When possible our doctors are happy to help carry your pet if needed. Sometimes due to lifting restrictions, the cremation service arriving after the doctor leaves, or other circumstances, this may not be possible.

We answer our phones and schedule appointments Monday through Friday, 8 AM to 6 PM and Saturdays from 8 am to noon. If you call us outside of those hours we will return your voicemail during our next phone hours. Our doctors will often see evening appointments or appointments outside of these hours. However, scheduling of these appointments is only possible during our phone hours. If it is outside of our phone hours and an urgent emergency, please reach out to the Pet Emergency Center at 509-326-6670.

Our phone hours are Monday through Friday 8 AM to 5:30 PM and Saturdays from 8 AM to noon. If you email us or leave us a message during this time we will do our best to get back to you immediately. In general we respond to all messages within approximately 2 hours. Because we get a lot of voicemails over the weekend and we return all calls and voicemails in the order that they are received, sometimes on Monday mornings we can take a little bit longer to return your call. Please understand we are working as quickly as possible to get back to you. If more than two hours goes by and you have not heard from anyone, please reach back out to us. Occasionally due to our high call volume we may accidentally miss a voicemail or an email. All voicemails and emails are extremely important to us. Should this happened we sincerely apologize. Please let us know you have called/emailed previously and we will get back to you just as soon as possible.

When you schedule the appointment we will give you a time frame for the appointment. These time frames are vary with the day but typically are 4 hour windows. For example 12pm to 4pm or 4pm to 8 pm. We will text/call you the day before your appointment to confirm a more exact time (ex. 5pm). Scheduling this way allows our Client Care Coordinators to group appointments by location. The significantly helps with drive times for both our service and the cremation service. Once you are given an official appointment time we do still ask for an approximate 15 to 30 minute window on either side of that time for doctor arrival. Due to traffic, drive times, weather, or the unpredictable nature of the appointments we ask for a little bit of flexibility in the timing of the doctors arrival.

We can take credit card, debit card, or Care Credit. A 3% processing fee will be charged with credit card purchases. No fee is charged for debit cards. We do collect payment at the time of scheduling. We do take payment separately from the cremation service. They can take Cash, Credit or Debit Card. They will take payment at the time of pickup. We do not have an in house payment plan available and payment is due at the time of scheduling. We are happy to offer Care Credit or Scratch Pay for people wanting more flexible payment options. Please see www.carecredit.com or www.scratchpay.com for more information.