Dearborn Animal Hospital Moving Out of Decatur
Decatur Metro | January 18, 2013Dearborn Animal Hospital just sent out this announcement…
Dearborn Animal Hospital Announces Our New Hospital!
It is with very mixed emotions that we officially announce that we will be moving from our location of 65 years at 715 E. College Ave. First and most importantly we are not moving far and plan on continuing to serve the Decatur & Avondale Estates area for at least the next 65 years. We will miss our landmark building that has served as our home since 1948, but we need to be able to provide the best care for our patients and their families. Our new location is less than ¾ of a mile away at 235 Dekalb Industrial Way.
This change is very exciting for the Dearborn Animal Hospital family. We have begun designing a hospital that will allow us make the transition to the new location in 10 – 12 months. This will be a big change for all of us, but we want everyone to know we will be the same Dearborn Animal Hospital, with the same great doctors and great care, but in a new, better equipped more efficient and spacious hospital with the same old fashioned personal interest in each of our patients.
Mayor Baskett, as your first order of business, you need to immediately annex the property located at 235 Dekalb Industrial. We can’t possibly allow a local business to serve (and profit from) the residents of Decatur without paying CoD taxes.
Thank goodness they are moving to a larger, more efficient building. Love the docs. Hate the current building and don’t get me started on the parking.
Like froyo and craft beer, Decatur/AvondaleEstates has the most animal hospitals per square mile. We know what we love – beer, frozen yogurt and our pets. Am I missing anything?
Best vets ever!!!! Worth the extra driving time.
Sigh. And there goes one of the walkable resources I and my kitty rely on as a car-free household in downtown Decatur. I know the Village Vets are walkable, but I had some very bad experiences with them and will not be going back there again.
That’s seems like a sketchy walk, especially with a cat.
What’s sketchy about walking half a mile on a sidewalk that’s set back an appropriate distance from the curb?
I also do not own a car, and I am with you on your concern. I have carried my cat (in a cat carrier) many a time from Avondale MARTA Station, Probably will now be difficult. But there are always Taxi cabs. I have been using Dearborn for over 30 years for my pet’s care, and do not intend to stop now!
Hurray! Curious, though, whether they will continue to offer animal boarding now that they are located so close to Wag-a-Lot and Pet’s Playhouse. Perhaps they should rename that stretch of road Animal Alley?
OMG no! I still call that road Kraft Cheese Road. Don’t change the name again.
Just got our kitten fixed & microchipped there. I will miss the quirky Tower of Adorable Adoptable Kittens waiting room but yeah, not the tiny parking lot.
Just curious as a Village Vet user, can someone fill me in on why they like this place better? Not too happy with VV but am anxious about changing docs in addition to my natural aversion to change…
Thanks.
Honestly, I liked Dearborn a lot. But the difficult parking situation along with impossible weekend hours sent me over to VV. If those things improve, I will probably head back to Dearborn. Their doctors are really caring, they don’t try to sell me $90 bags of dog food, and they don’t nickel and dime me. I find VV to be much more expensive and my dog seems to need an awful lot more lab tests there….
As someone who has recently been in your exact situation, let me make one suggestion. If your current vet at VV is not Dr. Villines*, try switching to her before going somewhere else. We had a pretty bad experience with yet another local vet after switching two years ago. We knew we had to find someone else and didn’t want to go back to VV because of our weird previous experience there (not necessarily “bad”, “weird” is really the best word for it).
Then we started fostering a new dog who was already being treated at VV by Dr. Villines. She was wonderful and it was absolutely our best experience with a vet ever. Whenever we’ve had any question (and we’ve had many with all of the problems this poor dog has had) she has been available to answer them, even emailing us late on Sunday nights and other such times. With two dogs already in tow, money has had to be an issue and she’s been accommodating and understanding about that too. Now all three of our dogs go to VV, but we will only schedule appointments with Dr. Villines.
That said, I have no idea what the heck is going on with some of the front of house folks there. Some are perfectly pleasant and competent and others are clueless and downright rude. When we recently went to pick up one of our dogs, I was very happy that Mrs. J_T was with me to witness the exchange I had with the girls there because she wouldn’t have believed me and just assumed I was either drunk or making shit up again. So I totally understand some of the complaints about VV. But I just couldn’t help but put in a good word for our favorite vet who just happens to work there!
*If Dr. Villines IS you current vet there, then I got nothing
[Note: I am in no way affiliated with VV nor related to Dr. Villines. Just a very satisfied puppy parent.]
Thanks J_T – our/my issues are with the front desk folks as well… always seems to be a large clusterf*&^ trying to pay and leave as well as checkins…
We’ve experienced this, too. Always great care, good doctor communication, easy on the up-sell. Only complaint has been the counter experience, though I’ve never been able to pin down whether it feels dismissive or just disorganized. We used to go to Emory, which ended up having the opposite problem — very attentive desk service but then an on-call doc who failed to respond to our weekend “dog’s dying, what should we do?” message.
Given those two choices, I’ll take the good care and hope the customer service experiences are just hiccups (they’re intermittent rather than constant).
Not sure they are just hiccups as I have the same experience every time. Just when doing something as simple as dropping off my dog for boarding, I have to fill out a questionnaire each and every time which takes several minutes. Since they are largely automated, you would think that “You are the only person who treats my dog and nothing has changed since last visit” would suffice. Do they not know they vaccinated my dog? Picking the dog up is even worse. It seems to take about 15 minutes for them to swipe my credit card and retrieve my dog from the back (plus, without fail, it takes whoever is helping me 3 to 5 min just to find my dog (common pet name combined with common last name) in the system. Do they not have an automatically generated list of the few pets that are currently under their care? Do they not have the ability to refine their searches?). The vets are great there, and, like you, so long as I am happy with the vets, I will keep using them (unless the experience keeps getting worse). However, they could definitely improve/streamline the front desk operations. Hopefully someone there (who doesn’t work at the front desk) reads DM.
Avondale Animal is awesome. 15 years ago or so, I loved Dearborn, and even had a few rescues the doctors worked on for free, but the front desk staff ticked me off about something to do with the real Nelliebelle and vaccinations and I refused to go back after the way it was handled. The people at Avondale are fabulous and highly affordable.
I have no desire to try VV. It’s for new people like J_T.
And today we get an email that Dr. Villines is leaving Village Vets and not starting or joining another local practice. Grrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!
That’s very, very bad news. Due for a checkup next month but making appointment right now.
Village Vets, bless their hearts, could not figure out what was wrong with my kitten, even after I spent $600 on tests & treatments – they recommended another $400 of diagnostics, at least.
I went to Dearborn and saw the doctor there with the most experience with the type of issue Miss Kitty was having: Dr. immediately recognized it as an allergy, treated immediately (even going to far as to stay past closing to finish treatment that very day), and did so for under $200.
We’ve used Dearborn for several years, and have always been impressed by their genuine caring for animals. They have always tried to keep things affordable as well, and will work with you. Also, they do pro bono work for rescue organizations.
And they have treated my chickens!
There extensive pro bono work is why I have stuck with them, dispit their facility.
Dearborn vets are awesome. Period.
We used Dearborn off and on for a little while when I was looking for a less expensive alternative to our usual vet because we own several pets and the bills add up quickly as they get older. I loved Dearborn and definitely would go back again some day. The staff is friendly and courteous, the vets all go out of their way to help you choose the best course of action. As Jess mentioned, they don’t push a lot of unnecessary lab work or expensive dog food on you. They’re more likely to follow a sensible course of figuring out what’s wrong through a process of elimination rather than test for everything possible at once. The big difficulty I had was with appointment times – I simply do not have the time to sit and wait to see the vet. My current vet opens slightly earlier and I can drop off my pets in the morning on my way to work when I’m not able to take off for an appointment.
This is not a big deal. It’s less than a mile, and an even easier ride over to the Farmer’s Market after you drop the pet off for their shots and whatever. Get yourself a croissant and some coffee, pick up some fruit, and chill people
I have a lot of memories of the Dearborn Animal Hospital, some bitter sweet. For whatever reason, I was always the one in my family that had to take sick puppies or kitties to Dearborn. First it was, “Chris, the dog is sick. Get him and I’ll drop you off at Dearborn. Make sure Dr. Greenig sees him.” As a young kid, sitting in the world’s smallest pet waiting room, with all kinds of animals and owners packed in, I was always worried that some huge dog would bite me or my dog. There was always a kinda funky smell inside and dogs going crazy in the kennel area. One of my fondest memories was taking Scooter, the family dog I loved the most, to Dearborn for the last time. I had raised this dog from a puppy but coming home from West Georgia college in the early Seventies, Scooter couldn’t even get up to greet me. He had lost most of his fur and was badly overweight. “Take him over to Dr. Greenig and see what he says.” So I drove to Dearborn, carried Scooter inside and laid him on that cool tile floor, which he seemed to like. A few minutes later, a gruff looking man led Scooter and I into an exam room. Dr. Greenig was a fine old Southern gentlemen who had taken care of our pets forever. After a brief examination, he gave me the bad news as kindly as he could, ” He will continue to go downhill from now on. It will be over quickly. He wont feel a thing. We’ll take care of everything.”. I had a few minutes alone to say goodbye, a few more scratches and pats and final words. Before I closed the door, I had one last look. Scooter was smiling.
I’m glad to read that for most of you, Dearborn is still providing quality service for Decatur area pets. There are many good reasons to support a particular vet but remember, you also choose one for their ability to take you through those final moments with a loyal friend. God bless our vets and their staffs!
Thanks for that memory Chris. My pets and I also had good experiences with Dr. Greenig. I like the image of Scooter smiling! Next time I need to go to Dearborn I will need to confirm this, but I think that Dr. Greenig’s portrait is hung in the lobby of Dearborn.