When he was a baby, Ryan Dulude unknowingly spent time in a cage surrounded by animals. His mother was not only unconcerned about this, she actually orchestrated it.
You do what you need to do as you’re building your veterinary practice while caring for a newborn. So that’s exactly what Linda Dulude did. She put her son in his Pack N Play and got to work at keeping animals healthy.
When you run a business as a family, this is simply normal. It’s also normal that your husband, who was in nursing school, comes in to help set up the practice from the ground up. He was there through all of it, renovating the place, setting up computer systems, running a business, even learning how to insert an IV catheter - before he did it in nursing school.
“When we opened our first office, I was five months pregnant. I guess I really like to jump in with both feet when I do things,” remembers Linda. So it became a family project by necessity.
“Dan was completely supportive. He helped me establish everything despite still being in nursing school. And here we are, 20 years later, and ironically, his nursing skills are still helping to set us apart.”
“I did different areas of critical care nursing for a long time,” Dan explains. “I started to get burned out, and she needed extra help. She says, ‘Well, come and do all this stuff that nobody else has time to do.’ Networking. Social Media.” “Plus, we get all of those concierge skills that he’s naturally so good at,” Linda adds.
He still helps with patient care along with his back-office role, although putting a catheter in an animal is a very different experience than working with humans. “When I started putting IVs back in animals, I was like, "Oof," Dan says. “The amount of force I have to use to get through the skin was light years away from a human.” “It’s just a feel,” Linda concedes. “I mean, I'd probably put an IV catheter through a human's arm if I went to put it in because their skin is so soft.”
It’s also harder to reason with a cat than with a person.
And this is why the Gentle Vet is called what they are. They practice from the pet’s point of view.
They’ve thought to have separate areas for dogs and cats. Dogs don’t mind mixing with cats, but cats REALLY do. Two waiting areas, exam rooms, kennel areas. They even have calming pheromone scents to help reduce feline stress, along with bird feeders outside the window.
“We even teach clients the proper way to carry a cat carrier to help reduce stress,” Linda says. “Cats don’t like to be low when they’re someplace scary. They want to be higher, so you don’t want to just place them on the floor.”
“We also do fear-free stuff for the dogs, she continues. “We'll just take our time if a dog is nervous and sit on the table and wait for the dog to come to us and talk to us. We always take extra time. I had one client the other day that brought their dog in, and all we did was teach the dog how to sit on the table, and he left. I didn't even give the dog a checkup. We just stopped. So I told him he can come in anytime, and we'll do little bits of that every time so the dog doesn't find it scary. They can just walk the dogs in and get treats so going to the vet isn't scary.”
“I started working with animals at a very young age,” Linda explains. “I think working with horses, since I was very young, helps because you can't muscle a 1,000-pound animal to do what you want. You have to know how to handle them and get them to do what you want. And I think having that patience when a horse is freaking out and learning not to muscle them has taught me to not just hold these animals really tightly and just make them scared.”
“It’s safer for the pet, and it’s safer for us, really,” says Dan. “An agitated dog or cat can be dangerous.” Taking the time for a little bonding establishes trust and makes for a calmer pet.
It's respecting them on their level, really.
This is what an animal hospital looks like when it was built as a family, not as a business.
It’s sort of the perfect blend of nursing and animal care. It didn’t start out that way. Not on purpose, anyway.
“Honestly, I had no intention of marrying someone in veterinary medicine because I felt like, ‘What else would you talk about in your own life?’ And honestly, I was leery about Dan coming and working with me because then you’re just together 24/7. But actually, we have a lot of fun at work, and it's actually been even better than I thought it could be. So there's that.”
“But it's also fun bringing all that nursing knowledge and experience in and then having her be such a great clinician, and then we can talk about cases and bounce ideas back and forth off each other. I find that to be loads of fun because it feels like we're always learning a little something every day.”
And that caged infant has been working with them since he was 14. It’s his last summer with them as he’s off to college to study medicine.
It looks like he’ll have a great head start.
The Gentle Vet is there for your pets at 647 Bloomfield Ave in West Caldwell. Call/email at 973-335-6500 or reception@thegentlevetnj.com
You take care of the clients as much as you take care of the patients. These animals, they're people's babies.
It's an expectation that our patients and owners have a concierge-level experience, before they even walk through the door.. That same vibe is the culture that we have in a hospital.