Cate Clark loved her dog. Everything about the story circles around and comes back to that.
She has lost, she says, her anger with the veterinarian who caused it all, though she refuses to even utter her name. Anger is hardly the point, she says. Education is.
It goes back to the morning of June 17, the day she took her dog, Ruby, to the vet. Ruby was dehydrated and vomiting. The vet said she would keep her overnight.
It was shortly before 9 a.m. when Cate Clark got a call from a different vet. He had her dog. She had been hit by a car on Interstate 70.
Ruby died later that day.
It turned out the mostly Rottweiler mix had been put in a kennel with a broken latch. Ruby had pushed the door open and scampered out a rear door left propped open.
“I was in shock when the vet in Aurora called,” Cate Clark said. “I couldn’t believe it. It could not have been my dog.”
Her vet soon called. Yes, Ruby had gotten out. She was so sorry.
It was all her fault, Cate Clark told herself over and over in the days that followed. She’d only picked the vet’s office because it was five minutes up the street from her and her partner, Kelly’s, home.
The next Friday after work, she purchased a website name and some website-building software and worked nonstop through that Sunday night.
When she was done, was launched.
It is a remarkable website, a combination of tribute to Ruby and a resource library for anyone with a pet.
The site offers resources on laws to protect your pet, how to file a complaint against a veterinarian, what to do if you suspect negligence or malpractice.
It also offers tips on how to select a veterinarian. Never select a vet based on convenience, Cate Clark says, might be the most important one.
She and Kelly adopted Ruby and Harley, a German shorthaired pointer, as puppies from a shelter in the same week 7½ years ago.
“I never got to say goodbye to her,” Clark, 37, says. “That’s what is so heartbreaking.”
She does not view what happened as an accident, she said, only simple negligence.
“It could have been so easily prevented.”
The vet apologized in person to her, and allowed her to see the kennel Ruby had occupied. It disturbed her, Cate Clark said, that another dog was in it, the latch on the door still broken.
The vet the next day sent flowers, refunded the $642 the woman paid for Ruby’s care, fired the vet technician who left the door open and paid to have Ruby cremated.
“You can’t replace what has been lost,” she says about the gestures. She has, though, filed a complaint with the state veterinary board, which says it won’t likely hear the case until October.
All of her energy, Clark says, is now directed toward her website, which has become something of a clearinghouse for people to relate their own stories.
She thinks about it for awhile.
“I don’t have children,” she finally says. “Ruby was like my child in a way. Doesn’t seem fair, you know.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
