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I’ve talked – extensively – about how important it is to find a good veterinarian. I’ve done that, however, without offering much advice about how to do so. Finding a good vet (or doctor, or dentist, or anything) is always tricky if you’re new to an area, or if you’re the only person you know who has pets.
I went through it myself. When I first moved here I only knew one other person who had a pet, and she doesn’t take her cat to the vet very often. She’s the one who recommended the low-cost clinic to which I first took my animals. While it was a decent place for getting cheap inoculations, it didn’t have great service and ended up not being reliable when my dog was actually sick.
What do you do if you can’t get a vet recommendation from anyone you know? Your next best bet is to rely on people you don’t know – via the internet. Yelp.com is most well-known for provided user-submitted reviews of restaurants, movie theaters, and other entertainment locations, but it lists reviews for anything, and that includes veterinarians.
A quick search revealed that it had at least one review for each veterinarian in my area, and I don’t live in the most populated of places. If people are taking to the internet in my county to review the local vets, then they probably are in yours too.
See what others in your area are saying about doctors for your animals; you’ll likely get a good idea of which vets are the best. Now I don’t always rely entirely on word of mouth, especially when it’s from someone I don’t actually know. Sometimes I see bad reviews for products that I’ve bought, enjoyed, and have no problems with. Take everything that’s said with a grain of salt, but at least some reviews are better than nothing.
Soon there will be a location for pet lovers to go online and review and read about pet products and locations, one that’s meant specifically for animals: petadvocate.net. Pet Advocate launched in late April; it’s a website dedicated to helping us take the best care possible of our animals.
Pet Advocate shares some similarities with Pet Pardons; its front page also contains stories about shelter pets, animal-based legislation, that sort of thing. Its main purpose is to provide a network for pet owners everywhere. It’s not a proper Facebook-style social network, but it’s a site where users can upload photos of and stories about their pets, and most importantly, review pet resources in their area.
Above I said that soon we’ll have an online destination just for pet-based reviews because, given that Pet Advocate just launched, it doesn’t have many reviews on its site yet. Although it can find and list local pet services, currently only reviews center, for the most part, on Colorado, though there are a few for locations in Washington State. I’m seriously considering submitting reviews of my experiences with the three vets in my area to the site, to help build its network.
Reviews on Pet Advocate aren’t limited to veterinarians; they’ll include anything for pet care, which means groomers, kennels, day cares, anything like that is in. Pet Advocate also lists rescues/shelters/humane societies, and I wonder if they’d accept reviews of those as well.
If you’re a pet lover, please check out Pet Advocate. In fact, please submit reviews of your experiences with local pet care providers, to help this wonderful site grow.
Related Articles:
How to Find a Vet for Your Exotic Pet
Pet Blessings and Ministries Spreading
*(This image by _tar0_ is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
