IN THE WORLD
Finding a small niche
IN THE BIG CITY
Bette Flagler interviews Wendy McCulloch – a ‘restless soul’ whose desire to help animals took her from caterer to veterinarian. BETWEEN THE COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest, the past few months have been unusual for New York City. For Wendy McCulloch, who was born and raised in Gisborne and studied at the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine, there’s never been a busier time for her Manhattan-based, house-calls-only veterinary practice. With millions of residents in lockdown and veterinary services following guidelines similar to those of New Zealand’s Alert Levels 3 and 4, Wendy’s services are in high demand. During the height of the crisis she wore full personal protective equipment, coveralls and booties, and required her clients to leave her to examine their animals alone. When euthanasia was required, she typically sedated the animals and left the room so that their owners could say goodbye to their pets as they slept; Wendy administered the euthanasia with clients observing appropriate distancing. She never stopped working and did a lot of triage; things that could wait, did. Wendy’s business model is straightforward: it’s her, her Chevy Tahoe and a remote assistant who answers phone calls and undertakes clerical tasks.
22 – VetScript September 2020
“I’ve had a driver, but during COVID-19 I don’t want anyone else in the car,” she says. “I don’t want to risk their health by going in and out of people’s houses and, because I can’t control their contacts, I don’t want to risk clients’ or my health. I’m also much more nimble if I work on my own.” A lot of people in New York don’t drive, and schlepping pets to a veterinary practice is no easy task at the best of times. As a result, much of Wendy’s client base comprises people referred from veterinarians who don’t make house calls – and yes, she refers clients back for procedures she can’t do in the home. Likewise, after-hours and emergency cases are referred to the appropriate clinics. Each of Wendy’s appointments is for 45 minutes to an hour and she has a strict policy of receiving full records in advance, and she allots time before appointments to read and summarise the notes. “The beauty of my approach is that I get to see patterns that I might not notice during a 15-minute consultation. I like to be as efficient as possible, so I do a history and timeline and recount the pet’s history back to the client for verification. Then we get to the ‘what’s the issue today?’ question.”
PHOTO: FRANCIS LAROS
