Please share with everyone, this expression of LOVE & GRATITUDE for saving, repairing, and caring for our sweet girl Georgia.

BEVS was on the job long before our most recent visit.  You have always been there for us, 24/7 (people say that about their service, but you prove it true every time) therefore, when I saw Georgia crawling out from the sumac grove, bloody and scared, I already knew how to help her.  I taught Pet First Aid for a few years for the Red Cross so I followed the lesson plan and provided the “immediate and temporary care necessary to safely transport, to definitive and professional veterinary care, without causing additional harm”.  I quickly checked her wounds, carried her to the safe transport set up in my car, and yelled to my husband “CALL BEVS!!”

We headed directly to your hospital and as I’ve experienced it, your bulletproof trauma center.  Start to finish I was treated as an intelligent and emotional human being, and it was pointed out to me that BEVS understood that I too had experienced trauma.  A gurney was used to get Georgia inside, every one was focused, calm, so calm, professional, and ready to go. I approved the necessary things, first verbally (grateful to be trusted) and then in more detail during the cost estimation… which is a critical service, provided judgement free, and for me it was a first look at what you needed to do and could do to care for Georgia. I had no doubt that you were going to give her every chance for a life saving outcome. That’s exactly what you provided, along with all the kindness and care needed to keep her from experiencing additional trauma and for me, to make necessary decisions.

Everything from the car ride to the checkin at BEVS is a bit fuzzy, so I’m not sure if explained that my biological father and my step dad, died 6 days apart, the week of Christmas.  I’d stayed in Massachusetts for 6 weeks to care for my mother who took a fall after my dad’s funeral, and had become wheelchair bound. I’d been home (in VT) for just three days when it happened.  I was bringing my husband home after back surgery when Georgia got loose. I take full responsibility because I chose not to get her harnessed and hooked to her 50’ lead before I opened the front door. (She’s a bird dog happy to trade the invisible fence shock for flushing a woodcock.)  I was exhausted and made a bad decision.  The tears I shed at BEVS, while Georgia was in treatment, contained all the feelings of guilt, fear, sorrow, grief, exhaustion and anger that I’d been holding in, for so long. I knew that Georgia was in your care, that the smartest and best we’re on the case.  The subsequent release of responsibility to you for Georgia’s medical care and the private room and safety provided to me (with tissues) combined for the treatment I needed, to survive.  It’s amazing how often kindness and care for a pet, can be treatment for the person as well…. Who Rescued Who, Right?

I have so much more I’d like to say in praise of everyone there, about checking in and out, phone updates and update requests, a flowing cost estimation process, your facility, and all that stuff. I would but, you’re busy and somebody somewhere will need you any minute now.

With great regard and gratitude,

Merlot was a BEVS ER patient TWICE in only two months, back in 2006. First in November, for respiratory infection (inhaling Lysol spray) and again in December, for a concussion after she dove under a treadmill. We really didn’t expect her to see her first birthday, with all the issues she had in her young life, but she made it! (Knock on wood!) And she is doing great 13 years later.

THANKS for being there when we needed you!!