If this is your first visit with us, welcome to the practice! Here are some helpful tips to prepare for your first visit.
1. Please let us know if there are any special driving instructions to get to your farm. We rely on GPS, but this isn’t 100% effective, especially in really rural areas.
2. If your first veterinary visit is at night (in the case of an emergency), please try and have someone available with a flashlight or vehicle with lights on at the end of the driveway. Often it is very difficult to find a new barn in the middle of the night, or in poor visibility conditions, like rain or snow.
3. On the day of the visit, please make sure that your animal is caught and in the barn before the appointment. Animals can be very wise, and they often know when something new is happening; typically, this means that they run off into the farthest corner of the pasture.
4. Please have any relevant medical history available for your appointment. We especially will want to review vaccine history to ensure that your horse is appropriately protected for diseases in New England, and based on the horse’s lifestyle.
5. If your horse needs a coggins done for the first time with us, we will need to take photos of his head and body. Please try and groom off any large areas of caked on dirt or manure before the photos.
6. If the animal needs a health certificate, please have available the destination (address, phone number, contact person, and email), shipper (name of shipper, type of transport-truck and trailer vs van etc, phone number for shipper, address for shipper, email for shipper), date of travel, owner’s information (name, address, phone number, email).
7. The computer system that we use is cloud based, so if cell phone service is spotty, and you have wi-fi at your barn or house, please have your password handy. Being able to use wi-fi will significantly expedite the clerical aspect of the visit.
8. If your horse is due for a fecal egg count, please have a fresh fecal ball in a ziplock bag, labelled with the horse’s name on the baggie.
9. If you are not able to be present for the visit, please make sure that there is someone at the barn who will be available to help the veterinarian. Also, please go to the Online Forms page and print out and fill in the consent to treatment and credit card authorization forms. These can be emailed back to us before the visit, or printed and left at the barn with the horse.