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- Mission
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- We put our patients’ well-being first
- We maintain excellence in medical care
- We treat our patients as if they were our own pets
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- We respond to the emotional needs of our clients
- We emphasize client education and prefer repeat business
- We seek to make excellent care affordable
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- We do our best and accept personal responsibility for our actions
- We maintain a safe environment and make a good living
- We support one another in both personal and professional growth
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- We rescue needy animals and find them good homes
- We teach responsible pet care in the community through school
programs and public seminars
- We help make service dogs available to the handicapped
- We teach and mentor veterinary students
Examples of the Mission
 Loving Hands provides free veterinary care to service dogs
affiliated with Canine
Companions for Independence (CCI) in the Atlanta area. Margo
Gathright-Dietrich and her service dog Tuthill are long time clients of
Loving Hands. Margo's retired service dog, Wallaby (not pictured), was
also a patient at Loving Hands until she made a gentle passing April 6,
2000. Wallaby was a loyal and gracious friend for 13 years.
Loving Hands functions as a teaching hospital for
veterinary students. Student doctors from Auburn, Georgia, North
Carolina, Tennessee,
Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Argentina, St. Kitts, and Canada have served at the clinic,
many of them living with JoAnne Roesner and Tom Denham during their
stay.
- Loving Hands visits preschools, daycares, public, and private schools to teach pet care
seminars and to talk about careers in the veterinary industry
- Loving Hands serves as an adoption center for many lost or abandoned pets. In 1999
over 200 kittens were placed through the clinic.
- Loving Hands is a very personal place where staff are encouraged to mature in personal
relationships and in professional education and skills.
- Clients who are abusive to staff are asked to seek veterinary care in some other place.
It is enough to deal with the potential of dog bites or cat scratches. The
clinic will not tolerate owners who behave similarly.
- Several years ago a receptionist mislabeled a prescription and an owner consequently
overdosed her pet. The pet was taken to the Emergency Clinic and when our doctors
learned the symptoms they became suspicious of an overdose. Loving Hands
investigated and discovered the mistake and admitted it to the pet owner and the Emergency
Clinic. Luckily, quick medical care saved this pet's life. Loving Hands paid
all related expenses.
- If we can make a good diagnosis without an expensive test we will.
- We discuss available options and give owners an opportunity to exercise informed
choices. We want you to understand why, for example, heartworm preventative is
important in Georgia.
- Our doctors will check blood pressure in the parking lot to help out with pets who don't
like coming in the clinic. Anxious owners can wait at the clinic throughout a
surgery and see their pet immediately post-op. We love our pets and we understand
that you do too.
- Veterinary medicine often involves judgement calls. The gold standard at Loving
Hands is typically what would I do if it was Memi, Roo, Beefy, Miss Priss, Johnson,
Chirpy, Little Fat Man, etc...
- Our doctors and staff participate in lots of continuing education and treatment at
Loving Hands is in touch with the latest advances in veterinary medicine. When
needed we seek consultation from both local specialists and faculty at Veterinary Schools
around the country.
- When a patient is not sick enough to spend the night in the Emergency Clinic but too ill
for the doctor to relax, there are typically two choices at Loving Hands - a late night
visit to the clinic by the doctor or a sick pet coming home to spend the night at the
doctor's house.
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