Harmony Hill Animal Hospital

06/15/2026

The clinic will be closed today, the 15th, and will resume normal hours tomorrow. Thank you!

06/10/2026

Have you ever seen a cat or a dog that was so paralyzed by fear, that you thought that no one would ever be able to help them?

There are many cats and dogs who will never be comfortable with humans. This can happen for a few different reasons, including not being exposed to humans during the critical socialization window (before about 10 weeks of age), because there’s something wrong with their individual brain function and/or chemistry, or because they’ve suffered some kind of trauma that they cannot recover from. There are probably other reason, but those are the major ones we see.

We often assume that when a dog or cat comes to us with that kind of fear or terror, that something terrible has happened and that humans must’ve done it—that they’ve been abused. I would argue that at least in the cats and dogs that I see, I think that the overwhelming majority of the excessively fearful animals likely have NOT been abused. I think that it’s much more likely and common that they either didn’t get human exposure during critical brain developmental stages and/or their individual brains are profoundly different from other cats and dogs. It seems like we see the same things in humans. A lot of humans struggle with anxiety disorders and while many have them have a traumatic component at their foundation, it isn’t all of them.

As a pet owner, the director of a cat rescue and the primary veterinarian for the cat rescue, a veterinary practice owner and medical director, and practicing veterinarian, it breaks me to my core to see cats and dogs with that level of fear. It happens all the time. Sadly, there isn’t any quick or easy way to determine which of those animals we can help at first meeting. That’s not to say we can’t help them. What it means is that we have to put in the work to see if we can help them and be willing to keep making modifications until we’ve worked through our reasonable options and then make the call, unless the cat or dog proves to be dangerous. That’s a pretty rare case, but it does happen. If I make the call that I feel in my bones that a dog or cat is dangerous, that’s a bold statement and I will never make that statement lightly.

Many and likely most rescue organizations and private individuals aren’t going to have the knowledge, skills, space, and other resources to go through the typically long process to try and help extremely fearful animals. Sometimes, though, those cats and dogs hit the lottery in a big way.

I first met a cat we later named Flight Deck back in February of 2025. He was taken in by an incredible rescue called Operation Press Paws (OPP) out of West Virginia. The rescue director is named Liz, and deserves the biggest shout out for doing absolutely INCREDIBLE things with limited resources.

Flight Deck was a mess when he came to Liz and OPP. His back right leg was severely swollen and painful, his tail looked like it’d been torn off near base, likely some time in the past months to eve years, there was bullet lodged near his spine in the middle of his back, and his ears were packed with ear mites, pus, and debris and were so badly infected that he’d developed what we call a draining tract at the base of his left ear. We think some rude cat bit him around the left ear and caused the abscess, but we can’t prove it.
Additionally, he had small pockets of gas accumulating between the muscles of his right rear leg from what used to be called gas gangrene, a name for a particular kind of bacterial infection that happens in deep wounds. He was so painful for so many reasons, the poor guy.

To add insult to injury, he also had serious tooth damage, the kind that may have resulted from whatever ripped off his tail and/or broke his leg, or from fights to defend himself, and he is FIV(+).
He was so painful that he was sort of dragging the toes on one of his rear legs (not the infected one, oddly enough), and he was so scared that any time any human even looked at him, he urinated and usually also defecated.

He literally p*ed his pants, he was so painful and scared.
Now, a lot of people might hear his story and tell us that we are arseholes for not doing the humane (and frankly, much more economical) thing and euthanizing him, or putting him to sleep, permanently.

We looked at him together, Liz and I and the team here at Harmony Hill Animal Hospital, and we saw a cat with a myriad of serious but also entirely treatable conditions. We saw a cat that life and probably a human or two kicked the crap out of, shot up, and generally tried to crush, and cat that kept going on spite of that.

This cat had grit.

We began treating the treatable, as I like to say. He got big gun pain medications, antibiotics, medications to treat his various parasites, good nutrition, and a small, safe place for him to start the process of acclimating. He also was started immediately on medications that help reduce anxiety to help him be more comfortable in his own skin and help make all the big changes in his life easier on him.

There are a couple of really important things to pay attention to here. Cats and dogs like this need to have **all painful conditions treated aggressively, all parasites treated, all infections addressed, and benefit from aggressive anxiety reducing medications** for us to help them. They also all benefit from having a suitably small, safe place to call their own.

When animals are hurt or scared, they instinctively look for a small, safe place to take shelter within. Over time, that animal will start making excursions out and away from their small, safe place. Those excursions will increase in both distance away from their home base as well as time away from their home base. The excursions cannot be forced and must happen on their time table. We also find that once an animal is no longer scared or painful, they will return to the original home base to sleep or rest, or if they feel overwhelmed. It becomes their den.

For Flight Deck, he also needed a small, safe place to help his wounds to heal without him trying to run or jump. A small, safe place allowed Liz to make sure he was eating and drinking, he was p*eing and pooping, and that he was getting his medications consistently.

Additionally, if Liz had needed to try and drag him out from under a couch or bed, for example, or run after him to attempt to medicate him, it would have been a major setback in his emotional progress.

When we say that a cat or dog needs a small, safe place, the literal WORST thing that a foster or owner can do is open up that cat or dog to an entire room or worse yet, entire house, before that cat or dog is ready. I cannot stress this enough.

Over the following months, we had many late night conversations about how we thought Flight Deck was doing. The first things to resolve or improve were the deep muscle infection and pain, as well as his various parasite infestations. The next was the deep bacterial infection around the base of his left ear and the deeper ear infections. His appetite was always pretty good.

For a long time, he would crouch in the back of his double wide dog crate in fear when Liz was visiting him and taking care of him. At first, he would p*e his pants every single time. Liz was afraid that the various injuries might have caused permanent nerve damage, but I wasn’t convinced. His leg function was so much better and he didn’t really seem like a truly incontinent cat, but we couldn’t say for certain for a while.

Because Liz is a beautiful soul who really cares and invests everything into her wards, she correctly asked pretty much every day if we were still doing the right thing. It was harder for her to see the gradual improvements that were being made every single day, probably because she was right there on the front lines.

Sometimes, the changes are so gradual and subtle that they’re only really apparent when someone not involved in every day care takes a look. When he came to visit us for his various rechecks, it was clear there was substantial improvement every time. He was moving better and better. He was grooming better and better and then eventually, he was grooming like a completely normal cat. He was less shut down and more engaged during his medical rechecks. We felt pretty strongly that we were on the right path for him.

At the end of May of last year, he was healthy enough that we were ready to tackle his horrific dental disease. We removed all of his broken teeth and root fragments. Every single tooth that he’d had in his mouth was broken and rotten and painful. He ended up having every single tooth extracted, and he’s never looked back.

After he went home from his dental treatment, his socialization and acclimatization picked up sp*ed. I think all of us underestimate how much pain cats and dogs are hiding when they have dental disease, and I think he’s proof.

Fast forward to this week, June 2026, a full year later, and I can say that Flight Deck is quite possibly the greatest success story we’ve seen. He came in for a ‘normal’ cat appointment. He’s a little chubby and still on a combination of buspirone (an anxiety medication) and pregabalin (primarily for likely pain from his bullet and previous injuries), and he’s absolutely perfect.

This cat who used to wet his pants in terror when a human made eye contact or approached him, this same cat was rolling over on the exam table purring like a real ManCat and making secret biscuits and maybe even drooling a little in joy.

This same cat is absolutely ready for a permanent home. Liz has worked her magic and on top of the several thousand of dollars she’s put towards his care, she’s put the innumerable hours of love and patient care in to help change his stars. I can’t tell you how many hours she spent just sitting with him to help him get used to her presence. I can’t tell you how much she’s cried over all he’s been through. I can tell you that I definitely left the room after seeing him in a hurry so I could go cry a little in the staff bathroom (okay, maybe more than a little but there were no witnesses so it doesn’t count) because I had just stood in awe of a real Miracle. A Miracle we made happen, together.

We absolutely cannot save every cat like this. There just aren’t the resources, and while it sucks, it’s also okay. We can’t destroy our own souls and bankrupt ourselves to only give half as much as 2 cats need, if we can give 100% of what one cat needs and still not burn ourselves out. Flight Deck is that one lucky cat.

Want to help? Here are some things you can do:

1) Support your local rescue organizations. Donate, donate, donate, and then donate some more. Recurring donations, even if they’re only like $20 or $50 are awesome. We all need money, and small, dedicated rescues like Operation Press Paws need more donations than larger, more public rescue organizations. We also need things like food, but we also need foster homes, publicity, and volunteers to help with basic things like animal transport to and from medical appointments or adoption interviews and sometimes, basic care like cleaning crates and medicating.

2) Support your local rescuers. This is an individual human thing. That means recognize the signs when an individual person in rescue is taking on more than they can handle. Do what you can to help ease their burden, and STOP putting more on their plate. If an individual like Liz says they cannot help you with a cat or a litter of kittens (or a dog or litter of puppies, although she’s distinctly cat-biased these days), please heed that. It’s hard for all of us to admit we’re in trouble and over-extended. If we say we can’t, we can’t. Ask instead if you can help with something to make things easier. Know the warning signs of burn out, and don’t be afraid to ask and ask again if they need help, and then if they admit they need help, provide it. A shout out to people like Dottie and Acacia and Anna for stepping up to help other rescues share the burden. We see you. We appreciate you. Please don’t stop taking care of yourself, please don’t take on too much, and please don’t stop being connected to the rest of the community. Respect our personal boundaries. We seriously suck at putting them up, so if we assert them, we really, really need you to respect that.

3) Recognize the signs of anxiety and distress in your pets, and seek help. Follow recommendations. If you feel like you aren’t seeing the improvements you were hoping for once you follow those recommendations, ask for more help. Stick with it. And please, please, please, please do not open the entire house or even a good-sized room to a terrified cat or dog. I cannot stress this enough.

4) If you’re fostering, don’t be afraid to ask questions. Advocate for your fosters. Make sure they’re getting positive human contact and getting their emotional needs met. Ask for help if you think something isn’t working for them.

Please join me in celebrating Liz’s huge victory. She’s going to die of embarrassment when she sees this, and while that sort of sucks, she also deserves this shout out. Please consider donating to Operation Press Paws to defray the cost of Flight Deck’s miraculous transformation. Please share his story so we can find the forever home that needs him, and so that some of the other cats who are ready for adoption might get the attention they deserve so they can also find their own forever homes. Every time a cat gets adopted, either a space for the next lucky cat opens up, or the rescuer gains a little bit of sanity and time back for a while until they take something else on when they’ve recovered.

Operation Press Paws
Harmony Hill Animal Hospital
The Cats at Longstreet

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06/03/2026

Something happened this week (already, and it’s only Tuesday!) that never needed to happen. It’s heartbreaking and absolutely, completely, utterly unnecessary.

The team here takes safety very, very seriously. Sure, we crack jokes and have (very) dark humor, but we also will do whatever we need to do to keep everyone safe. That means ourselves, each other, our feline and canine patients, and their human families. Our practice is designed to work with the unique behavioral and emotional considerations of our patients and we fully embrace cooperative care (more on that that in a second), behavioral modification (more on that, too), and what we call better living through chemistry.

What does all that mean?

Cooperative care goes by a few different names, but the gist is that we work with our patients over time and with repeated experiences with training and rewards to help them learn that we are here to work WITH them, and to establish expectations. We want every cat and every dog to know what to expect, and to understand what we are asking of them. This approach is gradual and in our highly aroused (Skeptical? Challenging? Anxious?) patients, it can take a lot of work. At the same time, this is how facilities like zoos and aquariums train lions and tigers and bears to get onto scales, or elephants or hippos to allow us to get blood from them, safely. If they don’t want to do it, it isn’t going to happen.

Cooperative care uses behavioral modification. That’s a fancy term to say we use rewards to encourage a response and behavior that we’d like to see so that, over time, instead of a dog having a full blown panic attack when they see the inside of the veterinary clinic lobby, they get excited because that’s where the good treats come from. We have modified or changed their response to seeing the lobby from panic, to pleasure.

Finally, we firmly believe in better living through chemistry. Dogs and cats can have excessive anxiety, just like humans do. And just like in some humans, some dogs and cats need medications to help feel better and experience life in a more positive way. There’s nothing wrong with appropriate medications. Some humans do better with a dose of Xanax before getting on a plane. Some humans do better with a bit of daily Prozac to bring down their baseline anxiety level. In our opinion, that’s not bad or some kind of reflection on their value—it’s kind and considerate. Dogs and cats are much the same. Some of them come to us with a history of trauma or abuse, and some are just plain born that way and benefit from some help. We want the best quality of life a dog or a cat can have, and sometimes, medications are an integral part of that quality of life.

When we have a patient who is distressed or reactive when they come to see us, we will do everything we can to find what works for that particular cat or dog. What works is different in every situation. At the end of the day, our goal is to have the needs of that cat or dog met, without causing them, us, or their families, harm. For some patients, that means we need to break up their visits so that they only have so much done any given day to keep them from being overwhelmed. For some, it means they get pre-appointment medications at home to help prevent the panic before it happens. For others, it means we do blood draws in completely bizarre positions or postures because that’s what makes the patient most comfortable and least upset. If a cat or dog is having a bad day, sometimes we don’t do anything at all and come back to try another day. And we have some patients who get too distressed no matter what’s been tried, so we opt to sedate them every time to avoid trauma.

As veterinary professionals, we rely on our team to help us keep each other safe. We also rely on our pet parents to be transparent and tell us if there are known considerations, and for the pet parents to be willing to be flexible, and to trust our judgement.

If I say that your cat or dog needs medications before appointments, I mean just that.

If we say that we are not going to proceed with a procedure or exam because your cat or dog is too upset, then we are not going to proceed.

If we ask a pet parent to start working on muzzle training for their dog, it’s to keep the dog and our staff and the dog’s family safe. Some triggers are just too overwhelming for some dogs and asking a dog to wear a muzzle is not some kind of judgement. I myself have had 2 dogs in my adult life who were muzzle trained for specific things to help keep everyone safe. There’s nothing wrong or ugly or abusive with proper muzzle training, when it’s done correctly.

This week, we were contacted by another practice looking for information about a former patient. While under our care, the former patient did not hurt anyone, but I think that the only reason it didn’t happen is we wouldn’t allow it. We never pushed that patient past their comfort level and when the patient was brought in without having been given the required (yes, required) pre-appointment medications because their pet parent didn’t feel like it was necessary, we did not attempt any procedures or treatments because it wasn’t safe. Simple as that—no meds, no treatments.
When the pet parent pushed for us to do things anyway and just ‘man’ our way through it, we refused. We will ALWAYS refuse. I am not interested in physically restraining an animal once to get something done—I am interested in maintaining a long-term relationship with that pet that gets better over time.

In this case, we informed the pet parent after the last appointment here that we would no longer see their pet if the pet parent was unwilling to heed advice and recommendations and insisted on doing things that made their pet increasingly agitated and reactive and indeed, dangerous.

We haven’t seen them back here in a while, and this week, a team member at another practice was seriously injured after this same pet was brought in to see them. Their pet parent opted not to pre-medicate the pet and insisted that the practice examine and treat their pet anyway.

This is not okay. This is never okay.

Veterinary medicine is not a low risk occupation, but we have a right to be as safe as possible.

We have a right to enact rules to keep us safer.

We have a right to enforce those rules, and to refuse service in any situation where we feel threatened.

My heart breaks for the staff member who was injured. My heart hurts for that entire practice family. It’s hard on both the person who was directly injured, as well as the staff that support them. The physical trauma is one thing, but there’s also emotional trauma and PTSD is common in our profession.

A small bite to a finger of a fellow veterinarian resulted in numerous surgeries because of nerve damage. Several of my friends who are veterinarians have had serious injuries to their faces, legs, hands, and elsewhere. One had to have facial reconstructive surgery.

As a practice owner, I WILL protect my staff as much as I will protect your dog and cat. I will ban pet parents who do not follow recommendations made to keep everyone safe, and we will extensively document those recommendations in the permanent record. We have an obligation to help protect our staff and the community at large.

I hope that the person who was injured by this particular pet doesn’t have permanent physical trauma, and that the emotional trauma also heals. I hope that the actions of this pet parent haven’t pushed yet another valued team member out of veterinary medicine.

With all that we sacrifice in this profession, it is any wonder that it’s so hard to keep fantastic people in our profession when we have to deal with unsafe situations?

We can do better.

~Kathleen Werden, DVM

Pictured: One superstar patient who gets very distressed with restraint. To safely draw blood, they were hugged by Kristina, given lots of head pets by Dr Werden, and Kristin had to work her Jedi-Magic to get blood from the rear leg as it dangled in the air while Lizzie held off on the vein. This patient felt that this weird and awkward position was (for some reason) much more comfortable and less stressful than laying on the table.

04/30/2026

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04/21/2026

We're happy to share that we now offer Cherry Payment Plans! 🍒

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Payment options through Cherry Technologies, Inc. are issued by the following lending partners: https://withcherry.com/lending-partners/. Term length, approval amount, 0% APR and other promotional rates are subject to eligibility. Instant funding upon approval.

04/21/2026

It's National Veterinary Receptionist Week! 🎉

In my time in vet med, I have been a customer service representative (CSR), veterinary assistant, licensed veterinary technician, and a practice manager. Trust me when I say this — being a CSR was the toughest job of the lot. 💪

Our CSRs are expert jugglers; you know those circus acts with all the plates on those sticks? Yeah, they have like 14 plates spinning at once and none of them break.🎪

They answer phones — making appointments, answering concerns, taking questions and relaying answers, triaging patients, putting clients at ease, providing resources, and handling medication refills. ☎️They manage scheduling — fitting in urgent patients, managing our surgery schedule, handling reminders, reviewing charts and making sure patients get the care they need. They balance our treatment load and make sure we don't run ourselves too far into the ground. 📆They help manage medical records, financials, client communications, our phones, our practice software, and more. I can't even begin to list the ever-so-important but random tasks that come up in our crazy practice. They are truly magical. 🪄

When we're super busy, they’ll jump in and help with appointments — checking in patients, helping the treatment staff, restraining patients, feeding all the Churu needed, and giving all the words of affirmation – to the patients and maybe to the staff if we need it on a tough day. 🥰
I'm so grateful and proud of our amazingly skilled CSR team. We could not do it without them. 😻

04/21/2026

We’ll be open an hour late today at 9am for voting. 🗳️

03/16/2026

We will be closing early today at 2pm due to the dangerous storm potential. Any clients with affected appointments will be contacted. Please stay safe out there! ⛈️

Send a message to learn more

02/23/2026

We will be opening late today at 10am so our staff can get in safely. If your appointment is affected we'll be reaching out shortly! Thank you and stay safe and warm out there. ❄️

01/26/2026

We will be closed again tomorrow 1/27/26.
Please stay safe!

Send a message to learn more