After operating on Flack Avenue for about 60 years, the Alliance Animal Clinic is moving to a new location. The new office, which is located on Highway 2, is approximately 14,000 square feet.
The main reason for the new building is to allow the clinic to grow.
Alliance Animal Clinic LVT Practice Manager Amber Cottrell said, “We’re just kind of on top of each other there and I think it will be really nice to just be able to spread out a little bit. We’d like to think that we are fairly progressive. We like our standard of care to be very, very high (…) Our facility will match our standard of care once we get into this building.”
The project was discussed for several years and broke ground last October. While the main facility is mostly completed, work is still being done on the large animal facility.
The main building, which will be used for small animals, includes six exam rooms, a charting station, a radiology room, a dental x-ray room, a surgery room with two tables, a treatment area, a cat hospital, a dog hospital, laboratory, a comfort care room, cat boarding, a cooler room for supplies, a small animal pharmacy, a large animal pharmacy, a room for bathing, a break room, boarding storage for dogs, boarding kenneling, rooms for smaller and bigger dogs, a bulk storage area, doctors offices where all vets can share a space and their ideas with each other, patient care, three offices and a dental suite, among other services.
The processing facility will be able to process up to 200 head of cattle at a time.
One of the newest additions for the facility is a dental x-ray machine, something the Alliance Animal Clinic did not have previously. Other new anesthesia machines, new surgery suites, new equipment and a new bathtub for dogs, which has a step to allow dogs to be bathed more easily, were also added.
Behind the main facility is housing for student interns, something Cottrell said is a perk to offer to students.
“It’s a really big selling point to get people to come to rural Nebraska and do an internship. Because we have somewhere they can stay,” Cottrell said.
The house is also used by traveling relief doctors.
The staff will move into the building by Sept. 19 or 20 and will offer emergency surgeries and urgent procedures.
The clinic will start working out of the new facility by Sept. 21, but doors will be locked and customers will be let in accordance with coronavirus guidelines.
Cottrell said the clinic is taking precautions to be responsible to staff and customers to keep people healthy.
Alliance Animal Clinic’s goal is to have the large animal facility finished by the time the main office moves to the new location.
The veterinary office employs 22 people between the Alliance and Bridgeport locations, including Cottrell; Clint Kesterson, DVM; David Ylander, DVM; Calvin Tolstedt, DVM; Anthony McClary, DVM; Kara Sutphen, DVM; and relief veterinarian Jack Klase, DVM.
Sutphen, the clinic’s newest veterinarian, did a year-long equine scholarship in Idaho. With the new building, a new large animal facility for horses and cattle is in the process of being contructed next to the main building. Cottrell said the facility is being added to grow the equine aspect of the animal clinic.
“Hopefully this will make us more efficient and…able to take care of more things at once, which will be really nice for us and for the community, and the surrounding communities because it’s hard to find clinics. Because as the old solo country doctors age and retire, it’s very hard to find new doctors to come in to places like Chadron and Crawford and those kinds of areas. So, we’re pretty lucky that we have a lot of young veterinarians on our staff,” Cottrell said.
Cottrell said the clinic serves a 100 mile radius.
In addition to offering surgeries, checkups and other procedures, the clinic also serves as an emergency hospital.
“Where we live there’s not emergency pet hospitals at night and on the weekends, so we have to serve as that for people too,” Cottrell said.
The clinic is open at all times with an on-call number for emergencies.
Although a grand opening was scheduled for this year, the event has been postponed to next summer because of the coronavirus.
“So, kind of sad because we can’t do the big party right away, but it will give us time to get in and settled,” Cottrell said.