Jennifer Germain

Review of Orchard Park Veterinary Medica...

A few weeks ago, we had to bring our beloved 12 ye...

A few weeks ago, we had to bring our beloved 12 year old dog Madden in on an emergency. We saw Dr. Emily Rabener. We always see Dr. Rabener for our cats, but she has never seen our dog before as he was an established patient at another hospital. We were afraid that the news would not be good as our vet suspected cancer. Dr. Rabener ran some tests and confirmed our worse fear, that it was definitely cancer, that it would just get worse and he was struggling. Without us having to ask, she said "if you're wondering if it's too soon to say good bye, it's not". I cannot tell you the compassion that she showed. She let us sit with him and we had a family member bring us cheeseburgers to give him as his final meal. She and the tech explained the process and what to expect. We appreciated being fully informed in order to make that heartbreaking decision. They were wonderful, even letting us stay for quite some time afterwards to say good bye. A week later, we received a beautiful card from Dr.Rabener. We were so touched that someone as busy as she is, took the time to do that! Orchard Park now has life-long clients as long as Dr. Rabener is on staff!
What I am discouraged about was when it came time a few days later to pick up our dogs remains, I stood at the counter listening to the receptionist try to pack our dogs box into a paper shopping bag. This upset me because I felt it cheapened the experience. Like she was packing my groceries. Had she asked if I wanted him in a bag, I would have declined. Please rethink this process. I'm sure I'm not the only person who has gotten upset about this. Other then this experience, I am so thankful for the way we were treated, it made it a little easier to say good bye to our fur-baby.