A Holiday Letter from Drs. Combs & Hubert
Dr. Hubert and I are your (not so typical anymore) Mom and Pop business owners. Just like in the movies we took a curvy twisted road to get where we are and it has not been without its share of bumps. But we have come to appreciate that we would not be who we are without the steps we have taken. We moved to the Greeley area in 1999 where I worked as an Associate Doctor at the original West Ridge Animal Hospital location with Dr. Emmett. We chose this area for its small town feel, desirable location to Colorado State Veterinary School (where Dr. Hubert was finishing her degree), and sense of community.
I
truly believe we found a real gem when I accepted the position at West
Ridge Animal Hospital. This is a hospital that was founded in 1968,
accredited through the American Animal Hospital Association in 1980,
and was staffed by people from the community who loved and cherished
every person and pet that walked through our doors. While we have grown
and now employ dozens of dedicated employees from throughout northern
Colorado, we still implore them to remember our community feel. I always
say you need to be polite in traffic and at the store, since you are
dealing with a Client, future Client, or a member of their family.
It
was with a giant leap of faith and plenty of encouragement from staff,
family, friends, and yes, even Clients that Dr. Hubert and I purchased
West Ridge Animal Hospital December 5th, 2001. The future Dr. Hubert
worked through veterinary school while we grew with the hospital. With
the desire to provide every service our Client's pets could need
(ambitious but it makes us happy) our Client family continued to grow.
We out grew the building on 28th street, that now houses our Sirius Fun
Doggy Day Care, and knew we needed to expand our facility to continue
to offer new healing services to the animals. We were fortunate enough
to strike a deal with Dr. Hemerson to move into the beautiful building
he and his son had built. With our team, horse trailers, a U-haul, and a
New Year's blizzard we moved our entire hospital over New Year's
weekend in January 2007.Over the last several years Dr. Hubert and I have come to value the traits that drew us to this community even more. With the addition of our 2 precious children we have become even more rooted and appreciative of the "village" that we have chosen. The small town feel has remained even as Greeley has grown. We recognize most of our clients by name and love seeing our patients happy, healthy, and out enjoying life with their people. To our kids' chagrin, we always see Clients wherever we go. We live in a town where we can let our children play outside, where they know people everywhere we go. A place where we can have a flock of chickens and horses that we adore. Our house is filled with noises from the menagerie of animals that veterinarians always seem to collect; our senior dog Madeline, our two kitties Speed Fast and Anika (that is what you get when a 3 year old names cats), and our squawking parrots who call the children's and late dogs names.
The sense of community that we first felt in Greeley continues to grow within the town and business that we love and work at every day. We have friends that we can call on (both two legged, four legged, and feathered), we get to be a part of local charity events like Bark for Life and the Weld County Food Drive, we get to assist with the Weld County Animal Response Team (helping in times of disaster or crisis), we LOVE building and riding in the floats for the Greeley Stampede, and we truly cherish all the people and pets that walk through our doors and that we see around town.
West Ridge Animal Hospital continues to be for us a way to engage with the community, to be a part of hundreds of different families, and to bring the best veterinary medicine and care we can to Weld County. Thank you for supporting us as we continue to learn and grow. We look forward to seeing you soon.
Happy Holidays,
Dr. Combs, Dr. Hubert, and Family.
No comments:
Post a Comment