Clinic Policies

Payment is due at time of service. We do accept Care Credit if a payment plan is needed.

Here at The Gentle Vet, we are passionate about respecting the mental and emotional health of our patients.  Therefore, if your pet is exhibiting an unacceptable amount of fear, anxiety, and/or stress, we will stop whatever we are doing to cause or exacerbate it.  This degree of stress is not only unfair to your pet’s emotional wellbeing, it is also physiologically dangerous as it is proven to cause hypertension, increased cardiac stress, and respiratory distress (to name a few).  

When this happens, we may need to discuss sedating your pet.  Alternatively, we may prescribe oral situational anxiety medication, and ask you to reschedule the appointment after the meds have been utilized.  While we realize that this can be an inconvenient change of plans for you (and for us), we will always prioritize your pet’s health and wellbeing over convenience.

Legally, we are unable to provide medical advice or prescribe ANY medications or prescription diets to pets that have not been examined by Dr. Faulkner within 12 months.

Rabies vaccination is REQUIRED in all patients that are deemed healthy by a veterinarian.

To ensure the safety of our employees and the welfare of your pet, The Gentle Vet is in compliance with:
Chapter 601 of the Environmental Health Code of the Summit County Combined General Health District.

Rest assured, if your pet is determined to have a medical condition in which vaccinations may cause harm, vaccination is not required. This determination must be made by a veterinarian.

If your pet has been vaccinated in the past, we do have the ability to perform a Rabies Vaccine Titer before boostering the vaccine.  However, the health department will still require quarantine and vaccination regardless of titer results should a bite occur.  Additionally, if the titer results indicate inappropriate levels, we will require the vaccine to be boostered.

If you are uncomfortable with this policy, and are not comfortable with vaccinations, please seek an alternative veterinary practice for you and your pet’s needs. 

Learn more about Chapter 601 of the Environmental Health Code of the Summit County Combined General Health District.

Because heartworm disease is fatal if not treated in dogs, annual screening is required (even if they’ve never missed a dose of prevention) in order to ensure that the prevention was effective.  If your dog is on oral or topical monthly prevention and you’ve missed 3 or more consecutive months, we will need to recheck the test before we can refill the prevention.

For your pet’s safety, we require blood work to be performed and evaluated prior to any procedure that requires general anesthesia.  This is required for all pets, regardless of age. Because of their potential for undiscovered disease, we also require X-rays of the heart and lungs in our senior patients prior to undergoing general anesthesia.

We believe in educating our clients, especially about why we do what we do. We have good reasons for all of the treatments and procedures we recommend and require, and those reasons will always be explained. If treatments can be done at home, we’ll show you how. Here at The Gentle Vet, you’ll never be in the dark.

As we are a very small practice with a single veterinarian, we need to be very efficient with our time in order to provide medical care to our patients that have both routine and acute needs.  Therefore, when plans change, we ask that you provide us with at least 24 hours notice by contacting us to reschedule or cancel your appointment. 

We understand that extenuating circumstances happen in life, and to accommodate that, we allow one cancellation a year without prior notice. 

If after this annual allowance has been met another appointment is canceled without 24 hours notice and/or an appointment is not attended without any communication, future doctor appointments will require a $50 deposit to be made at the time of scheduling.  The deposit will be credited to the cost of the exam that is performed at the appointment that was attended as scheduled, and cannot be applied to any other products/services.  If the appointment is again cancelled without 24 hours notice, or if no notice is given and the appointment is not attended, the $50 deposit will be forfeited and cannot be used for another visit.

We allow a 10 minute grace period for all appointments.  If you are more than 10 minutes late to your appointment, we reserve the right to cancel your appointment and you may choose to reschedule.  Depeding on the day/situation, we may offer you the option to keep your appointment, however, a $25 late fee will be applied to your invoice.  You may decline this option and instead reschedule your appointment, but please also see our Cancellation Policy regarding last minute cancellations.