Community Rallies To Help Tail Waggers Pet Clinic Find New Home In Livonia
Tail Waggers 1990 featured in Hometime Life
It’s been a roller coaster of a year for the people behind Tail Waggers 1990.
The nonprofit that helps serve pets with low-cost vaccines and provides emergency pet food to people all across the region thought they might have to close its doors last year after being hit with some fraudulent credit card scams. But after overcoming that challenge, the organization has kept afloat and has even relocated its services to a new facility it hopes will better serve its customers.
“After some financial downfalls and bad luck a year-and-a-half ago, basically the community rallied, didn’t want us to close our doors, cheered us on and this location kind of fell into our lap,” said Laura Kuchinski, the Livonia founder of Tail Waggers 1990. “It was a necessity.”
Today, the organization is located at 16322 Middlebelt in a shopping center just north of Puritan. Making such a move from its previous location at 28422 Five Mile not only made financial sense to the organization, but Kuchinski hopes it will allow the program to grow.
“We wanted to be able to add more services, we wanted to be able to expand our volunteer program, we wanted to have a little more comfortable space for our clients,” she said.
The clinic opened in its new facility, a former doctor’s office, at the beginning of March. Being in a former medical facility made it easy to transition, Kuchinski said, because all the exam rooms were equipped with water and other needs for treatment. It now has a dedicated room for its pet food and office space for its employees.
Tail Waggers provides vaccines for cats and dogs, as well as heartworm testing and microchipping services. It eliminated spaying and neutering services back in 2018 due to rising costs and last-minute cancellations, though Kuchinski said she’s hopeful that those services could eventually be brought back in the future. More information on their offerings, including prices, can be found at its website at tailwaggers1990.org.
Clinic manager Kelly Robertson said while it’s only been a short time since the clinic began operations in its new space, she’s already noticing a difference, especially when it comes to communication.
“I only have to open one door to get to any of the people I need to get in contact with,” Robertson said. “We’re all much closer together.”
The move is one that will hopefully bring new clients to the clinic and allow for additional growth. Making such a move, Kuchinski said, was done in part to the inspiration given by the people and pets who utilize Tail Waggers’ services.
“How do you let these people down? How do you tell them you’re closing because of a little bit of financial hardship?” she said. “We’ve gotten pretty confident that the community will continue to support us.”