General Interest

We invite all our clients to join the Brownsburg Animal Clinic team in celebrating National Veterinary Technician Week October 16 through 22, 2022.

In close collaboration with our veterinarians, veterinary assistants, client/patient service representatives, clinic assistants and office management staff, our registered veterinary technicians (RVTs) play a vital role in the day-to-day operations of the clinic, caring for our patients and helping keep our clients well-informed about their pets.

What Registered Veterinary Technicians Do

Our RVTs’ daily to-do lists most often include—

• Taking the pet’s medical history and understanding current health concerns
• Giving medicine and vaccines as prescribed by our veterinarians
• Teaching clients to give medicine and provide home care for their pets
• Taking x-rays
• Assisting in surgeries and dental procedures
• Collecting samples and performing lab tests
• Cleaning and bandaging wounds
• Removing stitches
• Maintaining patients’ medical records

Our RVTs’ Qualifications

To be qualified as an RVT in Indiana, our team members have successfully—

• Completed an American Veterinary Medical Association-accredited two- or four-year program leading to an associate’s or a bachelor’s degree in veterinary technology,
• Earned certification from the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency, and
• Taken and passed the Veterinary Technician National Exam (VTNE) and a written jurisprudence examination.

The computer-based VTNE presents 150 multiple-choice exam questions plus 20 more questions being tested for future exams. There’s a three-hour time limit on completing the exam.

The questions focus on nine areas:

• Anesthesia
• Emergency Medicine/Critical Care
• Pharmacy and Pharmacology
• Pain Management/Analgesia
• Dentistry
• Laboratory Procedures
• Diagnostic Imaging
• Animal Care and Nursing
• Surgical Nursing

In Indiana, only those who have met these requirements may use the title “registered veterinary technician” or the abbreviation “RVT.”

Once they’ve earned their license, our RVTs must keep current by completing 16 hours of continuing education every two years.

In Appreciation

We appreciate the commitment and dedication shown by our RVTs and thank them for their service to our patients and clients. We are pleased to recognize and honor their contributions to veterinary medicine during this special week.

We encourage you to express your appreciation for our RVTs on your next visit to the clinic.

October 12, 2022, is National Pet Obesity Awareness Day, sponsored by the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention.

On the association’s website, you’ll find an especially useful “Tools and Resources” section featuring guidelines to help you determine if your pet is overweight or obese, ideal weight ranges for popular dog and cat breeds, daily caloric needs for dogs and cats, and instructions to promote weight loss in dogs and cats.

For a 5-minute video overview of the impact of obesity on your pet, we encourage you to see “Obesity and Your Pet” from the American Veterinary Medical Association.

Let Us Help!

If your pet is overweight or obese, the Brownsburg Animal Clinic team is eager to help you help your pet achieve a healthy weight. Ask your veterinarian to recommend the best approach to addressing this critically important aspect of your pet’s health and wellbeing.

Like most general veterinary medical practices, we manage our workflow and minimize our clients’ waiting time by seeing patients by appointment only. We offer several types of appointments to accommodate the pet’s and the owner’s particular needs.

Among the options:

• Wellness visits
• Sick visits
• Emergency visits
• Work-in visits
• Drop-offs
• Tech Visits
• Referrals

To keep things running smoothly, we have established policies for dealing with scheduling, delays, cancellations and “no-shows.”

For details of the types of appointments we offer and how we manage them, visit the Appointments page in the Client Information section of our website.

In response to recent revisions to the Centers for Disease Control guidelines for managing COVID-19 risks, face masks are now optional inside our building.

Our masks-optional protocol aligns with CDC recommendations for Hendricks County—currently classified at “low” for our community level—a county-by-county rating based on new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 population in the past 7 days, the percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients, and total new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days.

To check the current community level for Hendricks and other counties of interest, use the CDC’s online tool.

What This Means to Our Clients and Team

As long as our community level stays at “low,” our clients and team members will no longer be required to wear masks indoors.

In keeping with the CDC guidelines, should the Hendricks County community level rise to “medium,” we will expect clients and employees who are immunocompromised or at high risk for severe disease to talk to their healthcare provider about whether or not they need to wear a mask and act accordingly.

If Hendricks County’s community level rises to high, we will once again require everyone to wear a mask indoors.

Regardless of our current community level, we expect some clients and team members will continue to wear masks simply because they feel more secure wearing a mask indoors.

CDC Guidelines for All Community Levels

At all three community levels, the CDC advises everyone to stay up-to-date with COVID-19 vaccines and boosters and to follow CDC recommendations for isolation and quarantine, including getting tested, if exposed to or having symptoms of COVID-19.

Free at-home tests are available from the U.S. government at COVIDtests.gov. We encourage all our clients and employees to order these tests for their households and keep them on hand to use if someone develops symptoms, has a close exposure to someone with COVID-19 or wants to spend time indoors with someone who would be at high risk if they were to catch the coronavirus.

If you are sick or test positive for COVID-19, or if you have been exposed to someone with COVID-19, we ask that you stay home. Call the clinic at (317) 852-3323 to reschedule your appointment.

Curbside Service Still an Option

For clients who prefer not to come inside, given the new masking protocol, we will continue to offer curbside service.

Curbside service is also a convenient option for prescription and food pick-up and technician appointments.

Whether or not you plan to come inside with your pet for your appointment, we ask that you call (317) 852-3323 when you arrive in our parking lot.

During Brownsburg Animal Clinic’s more than 50 years of operation, the team members who work at the front desk have been called “receptionists.” While they do indeed receive clients and patients visiting the clinic, they do so very much more!

To recognize and reflect the role played by our front desk staff more accurately, we have created a more fitting job title: Client/Patient Service Representative—CPSR for short.

“The new title suggests a much more accurate and complete description of the role our front desk team members play in our relationships with clients and patients,” said Brownsburg Animal Clinic owner Timea Brady, DVM. “Most often, they are the first team members our clients interact with when they call or visit the clinic and the last ones they see when they check out. But there’s a lot more to the job than that.

“They have always been much more than receptionists,” added Dr. Brady. “They are also listeners, educators, advocates, scheduling gurus, decision-makers and liaisons between clients and the rest of the team. The Customer/Patient Service Representative title does a better job of conveying that.”

The Job Description

Receiving human, canine and feline visitors to the clinic is only one of many duties of a CPSR. Here’s a more complete list:

• Greet clients and patients on arrival at the clinic and let technicians know they have arrived
• Check out clients after appointments, prescription and food pick-ups
• Answer phones, check voicemail messages and return phone calls
• Monitor and respond to email messages to the main clinic account, mail@brownsburganimalclinic.com
• Monitor the fax machine and send faxes as needed
• Answer and assess the urgency of clients’ questions in person, by phone and by email, conferring with technicians and veterinarians as needed to see that the patient receives timely, appropriate care
• Log clients’ questions and concerns into the medical records and bring the information to the attention of the veterinarians as needed
• Log prescription refill requests and forward them for approval by the prescribing veterinarian
• Schedule appointments, dental procedures and surgeries
• Manage the clinic’s prescription diet orders to make sure the foods our patients need are always in stock
• File charts and loose paperwork from the previous day
• Print appointment check-in sheets for the next day and retrieve the patients’ charts
• Keep the front lobby and reception area clean and organized
• Unlock the building in the morning and lock up at the end of the day

A Focus on Patients as Well as Clients

While many veterinary clinics have adopted the Customer Service Representative or CSR title for their front desk staffs, the new, more complete title includes patients as well as clients, an idea Dr. Brady approved. 

“When we began considering the title change, I suggested making us not just client service reps but client and patient service reps—CPSRs—because we don’t just advocate and act as liaisons with the rest of the team for the client. We are always advocating for the best possible care for the pets—our patients—as well.”

The CPSR Team

“I think one of the most challenging parts of the job for me is the constant need to switch between tasks,” said Katherine, who joined the clinic team in late 2017. “It can certainly make the day go by quickly, but toggling between the variety of tasks we have, such as checking clients in, checking clients out, scheduling appointments, entering prescription refill requests and passing patient updates and concerns on to the doctors—just to name a few—all while answering sometimes non-stop phone calls—certainly keeps us on our toes!

“We love helping all our patients, but I think one of the most rewarding parts of the job is seeing a sick patient regain their health with the help of our team. Nothing beats seeing a happy wagging tail or hearing a happy purr from a patient who was really feeling under the weather.”

For Stephanie, who came to work at the clinic in September 2021, the primary challenges are in learning a new field. “Fortunately, I love having the opportunity to learn new things every day and I find it very rewarding to use my growing knowledge to help people and their pets.”

CPSR Kelly, who joined the team in December 2021, finds it challenging to be thought of as “just a receptionist.” She said, “I have been in this field for more than 25 years, and I work hard every day to learn and provide the best care to all—pets and people.” For her, the greatest satisfaction comes with “knowing that at the end of the day, I have provided the best quality of care that I possibly could to clients, pets and co-workers.”

We’re Here to Help You and Your Pet

To contact any member of the Client/Patient Service Representative team, call (317) 852-3323 or send email to mail@brownsburganimalclinic.com.

Effective immediately, Brownsburg Animal Clinic is collecting advance payments from prospective new clients before scheduling their first appointments.

The payment amount is $58 per pet to be seen at the appointment—our standard fee for a physical examination—and will be credited to the prospective new client’s account and applied to the first invoice.

Why the New Policy?

Like any veterinary practice that works by appointment, we have always had the occasional “no call-no show” client who scheduled an appointment and then failed to show up. Sometimes an emergency or an unexpected delay occurs or the client loses track of time or simply forgets. We understand. Life happens.

Unfortunately, as demand for veterinary services has increased and scheduling backlogs have built up during the pandemic, we have seen a sharp increase in the number of scheduled appointments that are neither cancelled nor kept—particularly among prospective new clients.

In addition to all the usual reasons for failing to keep appointments, we believe these pet owners may be calling multiple practices and scheduling multiple appointments, planning to keep only the one with the first available veterinarian at any clinic in town. Unfortunately, they sometimes neglect to cancel the appointments they don’t plan to keep, and one or more veterinary teams is left waiting to care for the new patient who never arrives.

We find this especially frustrating at a time when there are so many clients who would have been happy to have that unkept appointment for their pet, and we would have been happy to spend that time caring for our patient sooner rather than later.

We hope by implementing this advance payment policy for prospective new clients, we will encourage them to be more mindful of the appointments they make while reducing the number of appointments that go to waste.

This policy also applies to established clients who have a history of failing to keep scheduled appointments.

To make sure our patients have uninterrupted access to their prescription drugs, Brownsburg Animal Clinic has recently updated our prescription refills policy, asking clients to allow at least 48 hours or two full business days for us to process refill requests.

Previously, we expected to refill most prescriptions within 24 hours—and we often still do.

But in these times of increased demand for our services, we’ve determined a more realistic turnaround time is 48 hours, or two full business days.

For drugs we don’t normally keep in stock, the lead time required could be even longer.

If we haven’t examined your pet recently, we may not be able to approve the refill until you’ve scheduled an appointment for an exam.

And if the prescription is for a controlled substance, Indiana law requires us to comply with strict regulations to help prevent drug abuse and drug trafficking, creating additional paperwork and documentation before we can dispense the drug.

What This Policy Change Means to You and Your Pet

If your pet has an ongoing need for a prescription drug, we ask for your cooperation in making sure you have it on hand when you need it. That means:

• Keeping an eye on your supply and requesting the refill well before you run out.
• Calling or emailing to ask if an examination will be required before the refill can be approved and if so, scheduling an appointment.
• Being prepared to supply identifying information and a photo ID of the pet’s owner and/or the person to whom we’ll be dispensing the drug if the prescription is for a controlled substance.

To request a refill, email us at mail@brownsburganimalclinic.com or call us at (317) 852-3323.

For more details about how we manage prescription drugs—including Indiana’s Prescription Monitoring Program for controlled substances—visit the Prescriptions and Refills page on our website.

If your pet has needed laboratory tests lately, you may have been impacted by yet another of the many continuing consequences of the pandemic: It usually takes longer for us to receive, review and interpret test results now than it did in the days before March 2020.

Here’s why:

• Like our veterinary colleagues throughout the nation, we are experiencing unprecedented demand for our services. 
• In the earliest weeks of the pandemic response, we were allowed to offer only “essential” services, creating a backlog of demand for wellness visits and elective procedures. 
• Clients spending more time at home with their pets continue to notice more health issues and call for more appointments. 
• We (and many of our colleagues) are seeing more new clients and patients who need our services. 
• Although we’ve improved with experience, curbside service is still somewhat less efficient than face-to-face interactions, reducing the number of appointments we can offer in a given day and lengthening the time required for each visit. Phone lines are often tied up. Hold times are longer. Nerves are frazzled. This situation has eased since we reopened our exam rooms to clients, but we are still offering curbside service to clients who prefer it and for tech appointments and prescription and food pick-ups.

Through it all, Brownsburg Animal Clinic has been and steadfastly remains here for you and your pet. Our mission is to care for as many patients as we can capably manage while upholding our standards for safety and quality of care. While it may not be “business as usual” as we and our long-term clients had come to know it before the onset of the pandemic, our veterinarians and team remain committed—as always—to providing uncompromising patient care to the very best of our abilities.

The Pandemic’s Impact on Laboratory Test Results

Every laboratory test result requires careful scrutiny and thoughtful evaluation by the veterinarian handling the case. The process cannot and should not be rushed. 

How soon our veterinarians and team members are able contact you to discuss your pet’s test results depends on a number of factors. To manage these factors and address the many competing priorities demanding our time and attention every day, we rely on a triage (pronounced TREE-ahzh) system to manage our workflow, including review and analysis of laboratory test results. 

When you bring your pet in for an appointment and the doctor or technician take tissue, urine or a fecal sample, or draw blood, we send the specimen to the laboratory—either in-house or outside, depending on the test. How soon we receive test results can vary depending on the lab’s case load and the type of test.

Once the results are in, how soon the veterinarian or a team member can be ready to discuss test results with you varies, too, depending on our current workload and the potential urgency of the case.

In the past, each of our doctors typically had one or two test reports to review and interpret each day. Currently, we are each receiving results from as many as five to seven lab tests a day, and we have to review and interpret each report, formulate a diagnosis and treatment plan options for every case, and contact each owner to discuss next steps. 

Using our triage system, we fit this higher volume of lab report-related tasks in among our other duties—seeing pets at regularly-scheduled appointments, performing surgical and dental procedures, completing medical records, reviewing requests for prescription refills, offering medical advice, answering questions and, if necessary, handling emergency cases that may come in.

Within the context of all these daily duties, here’s how we apply triage principles to lab reports:

• Test results for more urgent cases and sicker pets take priority over more routine tests, such as wellness blood tests for apparently healthy pets. A veterinarian treating a seriously ill pet will typically make time to review lab test results at the first opportunity.
• Depending on the purpose of the test and the pet’s medical history, we can sometimes analyze a lab report showing all results within normal ranges more quickly than we can evaluate a report showing one or more abnormalities. A pet who shows symptoms of illness yet tests normally may require further consideration and analysis.
• Regardless of the pet’s apparent state of health, lab reports showing concerning abnormalities may prompt a full review of the pet’s medical records and, perhaps, additional research and consultation to arrive at a diagnosis and develop treatment plan options. 

We realize waiting for test results can be agonizing—especially when you’re worried about a sick pet and anxious to find out the diagnosis and get on with treatment. We share your concern and assure you, we always do our very best to process lab test results in the most insightful and timely way possible. 

Thank you for your patience and understanding!

On March 3, 2021, USA Today published an article with this alarming headline: 

‘Popular flea collar linked to almost 1,700 pet deaths. The EPA has issued no warning.’

The collar in question is Bayer brand’s Seresto flea and tick collar for dogs and cats, now sold by Elanco, which acquired Bayer Animal Health in August 2020. Since Bayer introduced the collars in 2012, more than 25 million have been sold in the U.S. The collars are effective at controlling fleas and ticks for eight months.

We understand how clients reading the USA Today article would be deeply concerned—especially if their pets wear Seresto collars!

On our first read-through, we found the article concerning ourselves! 

After all, we’ve been recommending these collars for years as a convenient, effective alternative to monthly oral and topical preventives. We sell them in our online store. 

However, in all our years of recommending Seresto collars for our patients, we’ve witnessed no such severe side-effects as described in the USA Today article. We’ve heard no such stories from other veterinarians, nor have we read about them in veterinary medical publications. The clients who use Seresto collars for their pets seem to love them.

So are Seresto flea and tick collars safe? 

Rather than look to the popular press for definitive veterinary medical information, we decided to find out what veterinary toxicologists—none of whom were interviewed for the USA Today article—have to say in response to the article. 

Here’s what we found:

While the article alluded to numerous consumer reports to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) implicating the collars in the deaths of nearly 1,700 pets, injuries to tens of thousands of pets and health problems for hundreds of pet owners, there is no way to know for sure, based solely on raw, unverified anecdotal evidence, that the collars actually caused such a myriad of problems. 

’The signs are very random.’

Quoted in an article published by the Veterinary Information Network (VIN) on March 5, 2021, Dr. Tina Wismer, medical director at the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center and a toxicology consultant for VIN, said, “Looking at these reports, these are very random things, ranging from ruptured eardrums — which I can’t make fit really at all — to liver failure, to heart problems, to kidney failure. The fact that the signs are very random makes me think that probably [the collar] is not involved.”

‘You cannot make a cause-effect connection.’

A second VIN toxicology consultant, Dr. Sharon Gwaltney-Brant, pointed out that consumer reports to the EPA are often anecdotal and unverified. “Anyone can report anything to regulatory agencies,” she said. “That doesn’t mean it’s true or accurate. This is why looking at the raw data from these agencies is so dangerous — they reflect only the reports, not any ancillary information required to determine if there’s actually any merit to the report.” She added without a veterinary examination or necropsy (an animal autopsy) to rule out other potential causes of illness or death, “you cannot make a cause-effect connection.”

‘The toxicity of these collars is extremely low.’

On a listserv for veterinary toxicologists, Gwaltney-Brant said her colleagues expressed surprise at the concerns about Seresto collars. Even when pets ingest the collars—which happens fairly often with dogs—she said, “the toxicity of these collars is extremely low, and they have no ‘red flags’ on this particular product.” 

‘You don’t necessarily know where these collars are coming from.’

Both toxicologists agreed the prevalence of counterfeit products could make it difficult to interpret the incident reports. Fake collars, packaged to look like the real thing and usually priced somewhat lower than the genuine product, may not only fail to protect pets from fleas and ticks but contain ingredients that do harm pets.

“You don’t necessarily know where these collars are coming from and what actually is in them,” Wismer said. “And that could explain a lot of the different kinds of clinical signs we are seeing.”

‘We feel very comfortable with the safety profile of these collars.’

An article titled “Collar-Gate,” published on March 5, 2021, in The Canine Review called the USA Today report “flawed, incomplete, and misleading.” 

The article quoted American Board of Veterinary Toxicology President-Elect Dr. Ahna Brutlag as saying, “We feel very comfortable with the safety profile of these collars.” 

Dr. Brutlag is the Director of Veterinary Services at the Pet Poison Helpline and has worked with the Helpline since 2004. During that time she said she has not seen any examples of serious adverse events connected with Seresto collars. “Our data has really shown that the collars are not associated with severe adverse events.” 

Dr. Brutlag noted that the active ingredients in Seresto collars—imidacloprid and flumethrin—are widely used and based on experience, have “a pretty wide and favorable safety profile for the collars.”

Until we see solid scientific proof, and until our own profession issues warnings, we intend to keep recommending Seresto collars.

Veterinarians weighing in on a VIN message board about the matter have been contacted by concerned clients—as we have. Like us, after years of recommending the collars, they have had very few if any serious adverse reactions to the collars reported. 

And until we see solid scientific proof of a direct, causal connection to serious adverse reactions, we intend to keep recommending Seresto collars.

Rest assured, if any solid medical evidence of harmful effects of Seresto collars does emerge in the aftermath of the USA Today article, we veterinarians will be among the very first to know and to respond immediately and appropriately to keep our patients safe. The safety and wellbeing of your pets always has been and always will be our first priority!

Meanwhile, here are a few more points to keep in mind:

In our part of Indiana, we strongly recommend some form of flea and tick control year-round.

All flea and tick preventives come with some degree of risk of adverse reactions, but the risks of discomfort and diseases spread by fleas and ticks to animals and humans far outweigh those risks.

If you are currently using Seresto collars and the concerns about them have you feeling uneasy, we encourage you to click through and read the articles linked to on this post. Then talk to any of our veterinarians about oral and topical alternatives to protect your pet and your family from flea- and tick-borne diseases. 

Before using Seresto collars—or any other pet product or medication, for that matter—discuss the risks to your particular pet with your veterinarian, read the entire label and follow instructions to the letter. 

Counterfeit pet care products are widely offered by independent sellers through Amazon, Ebay and other online sources, usually at a lower price than the genuine product. Make sure you buy genuine Seresto collars and other pet supplies only from reputable sources. We guarantee any products you buy in our office and through our VetSource online store are the real thing. 

With any flea and tick preventive in any form, watch your pet closely after administering it—especially for the first time—and call us immediately if you see any signs of discomfort or distress.