Fillmore Veterinary Hospital

11/14/2024

We are so excited to announce our NEW pet portal! The pet portal is designed to help you manage your pet’s healthcare – from home!

With our pet portal, you can:
Review and print vaccine certificates for boarding, grooming, or daycare
Review your pet’s healthcare reminders
Request prescription refills
View previous services
and more!

To use the pet portal:
In your internet browser, navigate to https://petportal.vet/fillmore-veterinary-hospital .

Once you’re on the pet portal main page, click “LOGIN TO PETPORTAL.”
Enter the email address you have previously provided to us for our records, your phone number, and name.
You will receive a verification email with a code. Enter this code on the pet portal website. If you do not receive a verification email, we likely has a different email address on file for you.

It’s that simple – no username or password to remember.

As always, don’t hesitate to email, text, or call us if you have any questions or concerns! ☺️

11/13/2024

Blaze stopped by to see his favorite vet family on his 16th birthday! What a handsome boy! 😍

10/17/2024

Hello everyone! I hope you all have had a good summer and have had a chance to enjoy this beautiful fall weather. It will be interesting to see what the winter brings. We are doing well, busy as ever! Drs. Hensen, Lee and myself are getting into a good routine.
We are reaching out now to ask for your help. Our current concern in this election is Proposition 129. As you study the issues and fill out your ballot, we’d like to let you know what we know and what our position is.
Prop 129 would establish a “mid-level” veterinarian called a Veterinary Professional Assistant (VPA). This idea has been a yearly issue in the state legislature for over 15 years and is driven by big corporate medicine as a way to have cheaper labor under the guise of dealing with a “shortage of veterinary care”. This shortage has already been addressed in the marketplace as the veterinary colleges around the country have increased their class sizes and a couple new schools have opened up. Plus, our state legislature and Medical Board of Examiners have revised what duties Veterinary Technicians/Nurses can do, allowing them to legally do more in assisting doctors.
This position is also dangerous because students will receive only online training and no clinical work is required. Since animals cannot speak to us, the hands-on physical exam is the key component to proper care, and this is absent in their training. Additionally, there are no licensing or continued education requirements, and the state medical board has been left out of this discussion.
The Colorado Veterinary Medical Associates, American Veterinary Medical Association and Colorado Tech Association have all come out against this proposition. Well over 60% of CSU Veterinary College clinicians are opposed to this, and over 80% of veterinarians polled in Colorado would not hire one of these graduates.
For more information, go to KeepOurPetsSafe.com or cacvt.org/vpa-position-statement. And if you have any questions, feel free to contact us directly. We are happy to speak with you, and would appreciate you speaking with friends and family to combat big money, out-of-state influence here in Colorado.

Thank you!
Dr. Cor

06/03/2024

Dear Valued Clients, Friends and Family,

I hope this finds you well - it’s time for a summer update here at Fillmore Veterinary Hospital. So far, 2024 is another busy year; plus it’s a year of changes. In our earlier update, I shared with you our transition to paperless electronic medical records. It is going reasonably well and I thank you for your patience during this 1-2 year transition!
Staffing updates: If you have been in over the past 6 months, there are new faces as we have lost people to military transfers, and folks going back to school. We continue to be blessed with new people!
Dr. Webb will be moving to Bozeman, Montana this summer with his loving wife who will be taking over the Montana Pet Dental and Surgery Clinic. Dr. Webb has been with us for 5-6 years and I thank him for his time of service here as a great general practitioner, in-house dental expert, and ultrasonographer. He recently has been on a sabbatical building hand-made acoustic guitars. You can stay tuned for the future release of Wildflower Guitars, LLC to see his beautiful creations. We will miss him, and I wish him well! Looking forward, we will be using a mobile service so we can continue to offer ultrasounds for our patients in his absence.
Dr. Karen Ricketts has also ended her time with us and is going in a new direction with her career at Polo Springs Veterinary Hospital. She has been here for about 8 years and I thank her for her years of service here as well. She and I have been friends and colleagues for over 30 years, and that friendship will continue.
For the “Dr. Karen patients”, we understand the relationship you have built with her and we will happily forward all medical records to Polo Springs if you wish to continue seeing Dr. Karen for your pets’ care! Any Dr. Karen clients that would like to stay with the Fillmore family, I am asking for patience as we doctors get up to speed on your pets’ medical conditions. Dr. Hensen, Dr. Lee, and myself will be working additional shifts until we can find another doctor to join us. Our appointment schedule continues to be close to, or completely, maxed out. As long as the “COVID generation” of pets are with us, and as local pet owners continue to leave corporate practices, our ability to take on new clients is difficult. Once our doctor situation stabilizes, we will revisit that issue; I hope by the fall of this year.
As many of you know, I went to a 3 day work week last summer. That change has been good for me personally, and while I will be working extra this summer, my intention is to stay with that schedule for at least a few more years.
I hope you all have a great summer and get out and enjoy the great outdoors here in Colorado!!

Thanks-
Dr. Cor

05/01/2024

Could we paws-ibly get any cuter?

05/01/2024

Meet David. He’s a retired bomb dog from Bosnia. David has Horner’s syndrome and has to wear googles to protect his eyes. Dr Cor is making him feel right at home❤️

04/30/2024

Wild life at the vet hospital today

01/10/2024

Happy New Year Friends, Clients and Family!

I hope your holiday season was a blessed one. Thank you all that brought in goodies, once again we were inundated by your generosity, and a New Year’s resolution for me is to now work it off!

Looking back on 2023, thank you so much for your patronage. We wouldn’t be here without you. We had the usual staff changes, but we always seem to be blessed with good new people as others leave. Probably the biggest change was my reduction to 3 work days a week (from 4 or 5), plus the usual one or two Saturdays a month. It was time for me to cut back a bit physically and mentally. Dr. Amanda Hensen joined us at that time and her being here has allowed the new schedule to work. This has agreed nicely with my system, and I figure I can do this for the next 4-5 years. Even though Dr. Webb is on a personal leave of absence from daily patient life; he continues to come in as needed to perform ultrasounds, usually once a week.

The biggest change on the horizon for 2024 is converting from paper charts to electronic medical records. Our launch is coming right up in 2 weeks. I ask for your patience as we convert over. We’re slowing down the schedule for a couple of weeks during the conversion, but hope to get to 100%, or maybe more, by mid-February. During that time we will do our best to accommodate emergencies and urgent medical matters, but with several 24 hour ER clinics now available in Colorado Springs, your pet will get cared for one way or another.

Again, thank you for your pet care business. With the addition of what we call “the COVID generation” of additional pets/patients, and ongoing corporate dissatisfaction, we still are not able to take on new clients and their pets at this time. Our focus is on previous and existing clients and caring for their pets the best we can.

I hope 2024 is a good year for all of you, and I look forward to seeing many of you as the year goes on.

Thank you,
Dr. Cor
❤️

06/09/2023

Greeting Family, Friends and Clients,

I hope this finds you well and that your summer is off to a good start. I always have aspirations to do more in our beautiful state; we'll see how that all goes...
We have a couple of important announcements here at Fillmore Vet. Dr. Amanda Hensen is joining us July 31st. She has worked relief for us over the past few years, and we're eagerly anticipating her arrival. Her coming should take some pressure off of the schedule, and help us catch up.
With her arrival, I will be reducing my work week from 4 days a week to 3, plus the usual one or two Saturdays a month. It's time for me to cut back a bit; I hate to admit my age is catching up to me, but it is, and I need to pay more attention to my physical and mental health.
And as always, thanks for your patronage and confidence in what we do here. Without you we wouldn't exist.
Have a good summer - Dr. Cor

05/31/2023

Please help us find this sweet missing dog!

Older husky dog, wearing green harness with tags

05/22/2023

03/14/2023

Please bear with us, our internet is down and our phones are not working. If you try to call, please leave us a message and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
Thank you!

01/11/2023

Dear friends and clients of Fillmore Vet,

Happy New Year!!! May 2023 be a blessed year for you and better than 2022.

I want to thank all of you that inundated us with goodies, bought us lunch and sent/dropped off Christmas cards!! We were a bit overwhelmed by your thoughtfulness and gratitude, and I know I'll be happily carrying my holiday weight around for a while. 😁

And we're VERY happy to announce the addition of Dr. Connie Lee to our doctor team. She and her husband moved here from Detroit last fall, and the plan is that she will be with us 2 days a week. We're very excited to have her; she brings 10 years worth of small animal - including exotic - experience with her.

As for me personally, it's been a busy stretch the last 6 months of 2022, and as soon as Dr. Lee gets comfortable, I hope to take a little time off to rest. My goal is to get back to that 3 to 3 and 1/2 days a week schedule pre-Dr. Alex's departure.
Thank you all for your patience during this transition time; I'm excited to see what 2023 brings!

God bless -
Dr. Cor

09/30/2022

We're going to miss this smiling face! Dr. Alex's official last day is TOMORROW... how did that happen so quickly??? It sure is going to be different here without him! We'll all miss you, Dr. Alex!

08/30/2022

Dear clients, friends, and family,
As many of you have already heard by now, Dr. Alex is officially leaving us for California the first week of October. He has been an excellent colleague for the past 11 years, a wonderful doctor who loves to get on the floor with your pets, and we will all miss him greatly. And for me, he has been a friend as well as a peer. He is leaving us for personal reasons, and on good terms, so he has my blessing as he goes into the next phase of his life.

To that end, I have had a Dr-Help-Wanted ad out for over a month. We've had over 500 hits, and zero responses. Apparently other practice-owner colleagues in town and across the country are experiencing similar doctor shortage situations. Quite frankly, I'm a little flabbergasted by this current state of affairs, and when I really think about it, I get a little depressed. I believe the corporatization of my profession is changing it for the worse, but we can have that conversation in private...
And so, moving forward, the 3 of us remaining doctors have tweaked our schedules to work more, but that won't fully replace losing a full-time doctor. The schedule and availability will tighten up. We will do our best to accommodate all of you the best we can over the coming months until we (hopefully) find another doctor. I ask for your patience and understanding. Thank you.
We will keep you informed of our status from time to time. And if you have a family or friend veterinarian looking to live in Colorado Springs, and wanting to work in a pleasant and healthy work environment, PLEASE refer them to me. That would be much appreciated! We will get through this!
Thanks again -
Dr. Cor

08/16/2022

Killian getting some cuddles before his dental cleaning

08/11/2022

Sweet, little Honey came in for some dental work today. She had 2 fractured teeth that were painful and needed to be extracted. Check out these before and after pictures!

The first photo is of Honey dressed up, mostly for our enjoyment.
The second photo is of her teeth before her cleaning.
The third photo is of her teeth after we scaled the tartar off. Can you see that impressive fracture?
The fourth photo is after that tooth was extracted and her teeth were polished.
The last/fifth photo is of her recovering, we added a cute bee bandage sticker to match her cute collar and bandana