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Cuyamaca Animal Hospital & COVID-19

First things first, yes, we are still open!

As long as our local government and the health and safety of our staff allows, we will keep our doors open to serve you. However, we wanted to let you know important updates, outline our new protocol, and give you some answers to common questions we've received in regard to COVID-19 and your pets.

THANK YOU

We want to personally thank you for being so understanding and patient during this time, as things are taking a bit longer as we undergo our new safety protocols.

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Thank you for supporting us, encouraging us, and allowing us to care for your pets.

OUR NEW PROTOCOL

If you have an in-person appointment, please follow the below protocol:

  • Please call (619) 448-0707 to make an appointment with us. :)

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  • Clients are welcome inside the hospital with their pets.

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TELEMEDICINE

While a proper exam cannot be conducted over the phone, we can offer a sort of electronic triage in certain situations. If your animal companion has an issue and you are uncertain as to whether or not it is urgent enough to venture out, please call us to discuss how to get help over the phone. 

PUPPY SOCIALIZATION IS SO IMPORTANT

Cuyamaca Animal Hospital is seeing numerous new puppy appointments on a daily basis, which means lots of new puppies are likely not getting the socialization they need to blossom into happy and well-behaved adult dogs. This can lead to many problems, which we obviously would love to prevent.

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That's one reason of many on why we recommend taking your pup to daycare at Furry Friends Resort.

QUESTIONS

  1. What is the risk of COVID-19 infecting my pet?

While there has been one dog in the US who tested positive for the virus, we would like to emphasize the fact that if this virus was highly contagious in animals, we would be seeing MANY more cases. Please note that well over 1 million people in the US have had COVID-19, majority of which have pets, and we’ve only seen one positive test, with possible minor symptoms that could have been unrelated.

2.   Can my pet give me COVID-19?

There has not been ANY documented case of a person getting COVID 19 from a pet, even as a fomite. All transmission has been human to human.

 

Thousands of cats and dogs have been tested from households with people with COVID 19 & all, except 2 cats & 1 dog have been negative. There has not been one documented case of a person getting COVID 19 from a dog or cat in the entire world.

3.   What about this study about cats getting COVID-19?

There has been a study showing cats can be infected with COVID 19 & spread it to another cat IN A LAB SETTING (called "in vitro"), but this has only been documented outside the lab ("in vivo") twice where 2 cats were infected by COVID 19 by their owners (one in Hong Kong & one in Belgium). One cat showed respiratory & GI signs & one didn't show any signs.

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However, the dose of the virus was large, likely much larger than what the natural exposure would be. There were also only 3 cats in the study. Please know: there are almost 2 million people (likely a lot more) infected with COVID 19 & we are not hearing about cats in these households showing URI signs except for 1 cat in Belgium & 1 cat in Hong Kong. If this was highly contagious for cats, then we should be seeing a lot of cats by now. 

4.   Can I send you pictures/videos of something going on with my pet instead of coming in?

Please call us to discuss before sending any media. Telemedicine may not be appropriate for all circumstances, so we appreciate your understanding and patience while we test these new waters.

5.   How do I get the medicine or food for my pet?

We recommend going through our online pharmacy to avoid any unncessary outings. You can access our online pharmacy directly by clicking here.

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