There was a Sunday night that changed everything about how this practice runs, long before it had a name. Here’s the story I’ve never fully told.
There’s an idea floating around that somewhere out there is a category of pet parent who has it handled. Who isn’t googling at eleven at night. Who doesn’t stand in an aisle second-guessing a chew toy. And when you’re inside your own worry, it is very easy to believe that everyone else is in that category and you are the exception.
I’m telling you as someone people assume is in that category: I’m not. There isn’t one. The expertise doesn’t remove the worry — it just gives the worry better vocabulary.
Because worry, most of the time, isn’t a sign that you’re failing. It’s love that hasn’t found a task yet. It shows up before you know what to do with it, and it looks like doubt, and it feels like inadequacy, and it is actually just the size of how much you care arriving ahead of schedule.
So — yes, I’m just figuring it out.
I think that might be the whole job.
Hi friends,
I hope this last stretch of summer has been gentle with you. Slow mornings, cool floors, a dog who has perfected the art of doing absolutely nothing in a sunbeam.
Today I want to share a story I have never fully told before. It is where this practice comes from. And in a quiet way, it is also about you.
You see, before IPWC existed, I practiced in a busy conventional animal hospital. Appointments every twenty minutes, fully booked. Drop offs and urgent work ins layered on top. Technician appointments to authorize, receptionist questions streaming in all day. I multitasked patients the way some people juggle browser tabs, and I worked with a team that truly cared.
I still remember one Monday morning. It was my surgery day, seven procedures on the board, plus every urgent case that came through the door. Thirteen messages piled on my desk from the weekend. Twenty charts of callbacks I had not gotten to, twenty families anxiously watching their phones for lab results.
And here is the thing. Every single one of them was urgent. The surgeries had to happen. The sick pets needed a plan now. The families with questions had already waited all weekend.
Nobody in that story was wrong.
If you have ever been the person on the other end, five or ten minutes of face time with the doctor, questions half answered, options never fully discussed, sent from one specialist to the next while you stood in the middle holding all the information yourself, I understand your frustration more than you know. I was on the other side of that wall, and it broke my heart too.
General practice was built to be everything to everyone. The consult room, the pharmacy, the surgery center, the x-ray suite, the urgent care, the wellness clinic. With a skilled team, it works. But it was never designed to do any one thing exceptionally well. And the people who feel that most are the pets, and the families who love them.
Those days were the norm. People being upset was the norm.
Then one Sunday night, the night before another Monday like that one, my body sent me a warning I could not ignore. A full panic attack.
That was the night I understood the thing that now shapes everything we do.
Healing cannot come out of a distressed space.
Not for pets. Not for the people who love them. Not for the people caring for them. The room has to be well before the medicine in it can be.
When IPWC was born, it was one room and one mat. I did acupuncture and laser therapy, and that was all. Every appointment started on time and ended on time. I had room to go over everything and actually make a plan. I remember driving home those first weeks almost confused by the quiet in my own chest.
It felt like healing. For everyone in the room, including me.
Six years later, we care for some of the most complex patients I have ever seen. The ones who have been through multiple specialists, been told there is nothing left to try, or are reaching for care above and beyond the traditional path. I am so proud of this space. But I have come to understand that I am not the reason it feels the way it does.
You are.
The families who find their way here are different. You ask thoughtful questions. You leave kind words that our team carries around for the rest of the day. You treat the person answering the messages like a person. And a team that feels safe and valued does its very best thinking, for your pet. That is not a nicety. Kindness, here, is a clinical tool. It circles back to the animal on the floor every single time.
I will be honest with you, because you have always let me be. Lately I can see a little of the old pattern trying to find its way in. Messages stacking up, families we owe a call, complex cases that need more time than the calendar holds. I know that pattern now. I know exactly where it leads, and we will not go back there.
So we protect this space carefully, and we do it as partners. The most urgent needs are always seen first. Every day has a bandwidth, and we honor it, because that bandwidth is precisely what lets us show up whole, unhurried, and at our best when it is your pet’s turn.
Every family gets to choose the kind of medicine that fits them. The pace, the depth, the philosophy. Families choose this practice on purpose. And the quiet truth is that this practice gets to exist because of who chooses it.
Over these six years, we have received far more than we have given. We are on the same team. We always have been.
Thank you for being the kind of people a healing place can be built on.
— Dr. Lily 💜
If it has been a while since your pet’s last visit, or you have been considering whether this kind of care is right for your pet, send us an email at info@integrativepet.com. We read every message and respond as quickly as we can.