Apr 21, 2015
To the clients of Memorial Animal Hospital,
I have finally been given a date for the demolition of the old hospital.  The process will begin tomorrow April the 30th, 2014.   I know that the building holds many memories for the staff, our clients, and the community in general.   We have lived in that building for many years, we have performed lifesaving surgeries, we have kept our pets from disease, we have brought new life into the world with cesarean sections, and we have said good-bye to many friends.   We have lost not only pets, but family members and people that mean the world to us.
Drs. Banks and Beutel have both left this world, and they will forever be credited with creating this practice that is based on family and small town values.   A place where I run into my clients in the grocery store, and our kids go to school together.  We all root for the same teams, and we cry together for the same losses.  I have been blessed to have had Dr. Beutel be a wonderful mentor, and many memories of the building involve him.    Drs. Banks and Beutel were both such a large presence in the old building.   I am mixed in my feelings of the old hospital coming down.   The reality of the building now is that it looks old and half demolished on the inside from the asbestos abatement, and the removal of all of the equipment.    I look around and I see it for what it is.   It is an old building that no longer holds the life of Memorial Animal Hospital because that life comes from the people, and the activity, and the love that makes this business so much more than a building.
Memorial Animal Hospital is a living entity that we create every day.  The community, the staff, the dogs and the cats we all give the hospital a purpose, and it is that togetherness that we take with us to the new building.   The memories will be with us forever, the things we learned, the experiences we shared, the people we have cherished all help to bring us together, not the four walls that surround us.
Although the walls will no longer be present we have had many requests for a piece of the old building.   I hope that each of you can share your memories of the old hospital with us and with one another.    The building may not be there forever, but our memories will be.   It is time for us to move on, but not to forget the animals, the people, and certainly not the experiences.Â
Theresa Heibel, DVM