About Us

Our goal is to surpass your expec­ta­tions by deliv­er­ing consis­tent quality care of your pet and main­tain­ing stan­dards of excel­lence, while meeting your needs as they relate to the deliv­ery of small animal veteri­nary medi­cine. We embrace the power of the human/​animal bond by bridg­ing tech­nol­ogy with compas­sion and uphold­ing our Veterinarian’s Oath. 

We are a fully accred­ited small animal hospi­tal meeting all of the require­ments of our provin­cial licens­ing body (College of Veteri­nar­i­ans of Ontario – CVO) and volun­tar­ily fulfill­ing those of an inde­pen­dent inter­na­tional review body (Amer­i­can Animal Hospi­tal Asso­ci­a­tion – AAHA). These stan­dards cover nearly every aspect of our hospi­tal, includ­ing surgery, phar­macy, labo­ra­tory, exam facil­i­ties, pet health records, clean­li­ness, emer­gency services, dental and nursing care, diag­nos­tic imaging, anes­the­si­ol­ogy, and patient care and safety. Only a small percent­age of veteri­nary hospi­tals in Canada and USA meet the stan­dards neces­sary to be accred­ited by the AAHA. The AAHA is recog­nized around the world as the bench­mark for quality care in veteri­nary medi­cine. The overall objec­tive ensures that our prac­tice meets strin­gent guide­lines to protect you and your pets. Routine on-site inspec­tions by these bodies (CVO and AAHA) ensure that our facil­ity and staff meet or surpass specific stan­dards of care using the latest proce­dures and technology.

The orig­i­nal prop­erty dates back to the early 40’s and has been the site of various services ranging from Consumer’s Gas head­quar­ters and main­te­nance depot to the local health depart­ment. Dr. Douglas Waines estab­lished Borderview Veteri­nary Hospi­tal in the spring of 1977 as the solo prac­ti­tioner. The prac­tice grew over the past 40+ years, adding veteri­nar­i­ans and staff along the way. Dr. Johnathan McTag­gart came on board in 2004, and purchased the prac­tice when Dr Waines retired in 2012. Dr. McTag­gart’s team now consists of 4 veteri­nar­i­ans and 9 support staff, consist­ing of regis­tered veteri­nary tech­ni­cians, veteri­nary assis­tants, a client service repre­sen­ta­tive, a book­keeper and an office manager, all working together for the health and well­ness of our canine & feline patients!

Who are we? The hospi­tal staff currently includes 4 veteri­nar­i­ans and a compli­ment of mature and highly trained support staff. Virtu­ally the entire staff- recep­tion­ists, tech­ni­cians, animal care assis­tants and veteri­nar­i­ans, are enrolled in contin­u­ing medical educa­tion programs year-round. This contin­u­ously builds upon a solid foun­da­tion of knowl­edge and experience. 

What are we? We are a mature prac­tice oper­at­ing under orig­i­nal manage­ment since 1977. An excess of 4000 sq feet floor space provides ample room to meet our needs. The hospi­tal has seen 3 reno­va­tion­s/add-ons; the last one being a roof raising expe­ri­ence in 1991!

How do we think? Our hospi­tal philos­o­phy is actu­ally quite simple and is based on the premise that we treat all pets as if they were our own. We respect every case as an oppor­tu­nity to share time with a special member of your family and further under­stand the posi­tive impact they have on our lives. To this end, we operate as a cohe­sive team of profes­sional animal health care providers. We are a ​“chatty group”, in a constant dynamic state of commu­ni­ca­tions sharing each other’s views and perspec­tives of cases. Inter­nal second and third opin­ions occur among us on a daily basis.

What do we do? We provide a wide variety of small animal medical and surgi­cal services to a client base serving the Greater Fort Erie area, Niagara Penin­sula and Western New York.

It is an accepted fact that medical knowl­edge doubles approx­i­mately once every four years; there­fore, ​“if you snooze, you lose” has real meaning. Today it is not enough to rest on the past. Keeping up is crit­i­cal in any profes­sion. Learn­ing new concepts and chal­leng­ing tradi­tional think­ing means we strive to get better as we get older. We embrace this concept and have a long history of staff members attend­ing contin­u­ing educa­tion programs through­out the year annually.

All veteri­nar­i­ans attend 9 half-day lectures per year through the Buffalo Academy of Veteri­nary Medi­cine. Lectur­ers come from major univer­sity centers through­out US and Canada. A paral­lel C/E program is attended by 6 of our support staff at Medaille College, Buffalo, NY.

We are active in our local veteri­nary group (Niagara Veteri­nary Medical Asso­ci­a­tion), support­ing local and regional speak­ers on a regular basis. We also main­tain volun­tary member­ships in provin­cial (OVMA-Ontario Veteri­nary Medical Asso­ci­a­tion), national (CVMA-Cana­dian Veteri­nary Medical Asso­ci­a­tion), and inter­na­tional veteri­nary asso­ci­a­tions (AAHA-Amer­i­can Animal Hospital Association).

Main­tain­ing current veteri­nary medical jour­nals, access to on-line resources and contin­u­ing educa­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties enhance our team’s approach for further knowl­edge. Substan­tial finan­cial effort and time away from clin­i­cal prac­tice is dedi­cated to broad­en­ing and deep­en­ing our under­stand­ing of the various aspects of veteri­nary medi­cine. Not surpris­ingly, this evolv­ing level of knowl­edge actu­ally strength­ens our enthu­si­asm to do our job the best we can.

We believe a healthy prac­tice must be a finan­cially sound prac­tice- in order to attract and retain highly skilled person­nel and to contin­u­ously upgrade equip­ment and proce­dures for the welfare of our patients and satis­fac­tion of their guardians. We are proud of main­tain­ing a high staff reten­tion rate. Many of our staff have been here 10 years or more, with several staff with 25+ years of seniority!

We only accept the follow­ing forms of payment: VISA, Master­Card, Debit Card, or Cash. It is with regret that we cannot allow charg­ing anymore. Previ­ous abuse has forced us to adopt this strict policy. Charg­ing (finan­cial lending) distracts our ability to focus our concen­tra­tion on provid­ing thor­ough veteri­nary medical and surgical services.