FAH has been our vet clinic since we moved to the area 11 years ago. More than once in emergency…read moresituations we've been glad they're less than 10 minutes from our house, because until a few years ago, the closest emergency clinic was more than half an hour away. Dr. Audrey Karamourtopoulos (she goes by Dr. Audrey for obvious reasons) is the clinic owner and our primary vet. For the longest time she was the only vet there, but over the years other vets have been brought on staff.
Dr. Audrey has been a wonderful caretaker for our dogs, and even the occasional foster. She will sit on the floor with a dog and let them give her a facial while she tries to conduct an exam. She is one of the most compassionate people I've ever met. Some people like a vet who is all business, others like the heart-on-sleeve kind. Dr. Audrey is a little bit of both, but leans more towards the latter. Easy to tears, this lady, even more than me. I'm okay with that, I don't feel silly getting sniffly in front of her, or on the phone. She usually beats me to it.
She's a skilled surgeon too. She saved the life of our first Rottweiler, who was bloating, which is a life threatening condition. Carl would have died enroute to an ER clinic, but fortunately FAH was open. He recovered really well. We had to go out of town a couple weeks later and did medical board at the clinic just to be sure he had around the clock attention.
Because the clinic is attached to Dr. Audrey's home, she is available at all hours. She sat up with our neighbor's dog at 2am while he died in her arms from hemangiosarcoma. FAH has techs on staff 24/7. Unlike some other clinics where animals might be left alone overnight.
FAH also does rescues, mostly cats, but occasionally dogs that might be strays and owners not located, or the animals have been surrendered to the clinic. Dr. Audrey is the vet for a local Doberman Pinscher rescue.
Like a lot of vets, she's not an advocate for raw feeding. She will try and point out some of what she feels are negatives, but won't try to stop you outright. It's your dog, not hers. We've agreed to disagree, though she has admitted that my dogs are pretty darned healthy overall (even our cancer boy is still on part raw/part kibble and doing great) and have gorgeous coats. Argo came to us with teeth so covered in plaque you could barely see the cusps. No dental done, just some manual scraping to remove the large chunks by a hygienst and a raw diet have really cleaned his teeth up.
Dr. Audrey doesn't try to overvaccinate your pets either. She was actually the first person to tell me about titers (blood test to determine antibody levels) when we first met and had a senior dog. Other than rabies, we didn't need to be pumping the poor creature full of the damned things.
She often runs late, because she doesn't rush through appointments. Not every situation can be handled in 15 minutes. I may wait an hour to see her, and I'm okay with that. Just take my dog outside for a walk; girls at the front desk will call me in when it's time. Dr. Audrey will spend as much time as you need her to, especially if there are a lot of questions coming up.
Lately we've had some communication issues, having to wait longer than I thought was appropriate for a return call on something, but that seems to have been a short lived issue. Hasn't happened again.
Drs. Baker and Stephanie are the other current DVMs on staff. Haven't worked much with Dr. Stephanie, but she is more of a small/exotic animal and bird vet. Dr. Baker is a nice gentleman, little more of the reserved, old school type vet. Dr. Audrey was out of town at the time Argo presented with a recurring limp; Dr. Baker caught his bone cancer early. We will be forever grateful for that, as it's given us more time to try different treatments and kept him with us longer than most people get in this situation. He also did a nice job pulling over 200 baby porcupine quills (they're small, soft and hard to find!) from Hannahbelle's feet and mouth recently. Don't ask... She's lucky she's cute!
