Switching Vets in Colorado Springs: How to Transfer Your Pet's Records (and What to Ask a New Vet)
You are allowed to switch veterinarians. You do not owe anyone an explanation, an apology, or a reason. This page is the part nobody tells you: how records actually move, what to ask before you commit, what independent ownership does and does not mean, and why the bill is what it is.
Written by Dr. Robbie Unsell, DVM — owner, Red Rock Veterinary Health
You Are Allowed to Switch
I am Dr. Robbie Unsell. I own Red Rock Veterinary Health, and I am going to start with the thing that actually keeps people stuck, because it is not paperwork. It is guilt. Search for how to change veterinarians and one of the first things you hit is a Reddit thread about “etiquette” — people worrying they will be judged, or that they owe their old clinic something. So let me say it as plainly as I can from the other side of the counter.
You are your pet's decision-maker. You are paying for the care. You can move that care whenever you want, for any reason or no stated reason at all — you moved across town, the wait got long, the prices changed, you never see the same doctor twice, or something just did not sit right. None of those require a defense. A veterinarian who has been doing this a while has had clients leave and come back and leave again, and it is not personal. Records requests are ordinary administrative work; we send charts out and take charts in every single week.
If it helps to have the words ready, here they are. You do not need more than this.
The entire script
“I am moving my pet's care to another practice. Please send a copy of the complete medical record to Red Rock Veterinary Health at Reception@RedRockVet.com. Thank you.”
That is it. No explanation, no criticism, no reason. If someone pushes back or makes you feel bad for asking, that is information about them, not about you.
Ask for the Chart, Not the Summary
The most common failure in a vet switch is a records request that produces one page of vaccination dates. That is not your pet's medical history. Ask for these things by name:
The honest answer about who owns the record
This is where a lot of websites overstate things, so here is the careful version. In most states, the physical or electronic chart is the property of the practice that created it, and clients are customarily given a copyof the pet's medical history rather than the original file. That distinction sounds like hair-splitting until someone tells you no, and then it matters.
I am not going to quote you a Colorado statute I have not personally verified. If you want the authoritative answer for this state, the Colorado State Board of Veterinary Medicine is the right place to ask. What I can tell you from running a practice here: the overwhelming majority of records requests are honored without any friction at all, practices differ in how they handle a request while a balance is outstanding, and paying off a balance removes that question entirely. Your rabies and vaccination certificates may also be on file with whichever authority licenses your pet.
And if you do get stuck, tell us. A request that comes from one veterinary practice to another tends to move faster than one that comes from a client, and we can make that request from our side.
How to Request Your Records, in Four Steps
- 1Ask in writing. Email is best because it timestamps itself. A phone call works too, but follow it with an email so there is a record of what you asked for and when.
- 2Name the receiving practice. Give your current clinic the new practice's full name, phone number, and email address. For us that is Red Rock Veterinary Health, (719) 204-3647, Reception@RedRockVet.com.
- 3Ask for everything, by category. Use the list above. 'Send my records' often produces a one-page vaccination summary; naming the categories produces the actual chart.
- 4Confirm it landed. Records transfers get missed more often than anyone likes to admit. Call the receiving practice a few days later and ask whether the file arrived and whether it looks complete.
Ten Questions to Ask Any Veterinarian Before You Switch
This list is written to be useful even if you choose a different practice than ours. Copy it, print it, read it off your phone at the front desk. Any veterinary team worth joining will answer all ten without getting defensive.
Question ten is the one people forget, and it is revealing. A practice that is straightforward about how it releases your records if you leave is a practice that is not holding you hostage. Ask us that one. We send the complete chart, not a summary.
Independent vs. Corporate Ownership, Stated Fairly
A large share of American veterinary hospitals now belong to consolidated groups. The biggest names are easy to verify: Mars Veterinary Health owns both VCA and Banfield Pet Hospital. Thrive Pet Healthcare is another national group. Petco operates Vetco clinics inside its stores. Several of these brands operate here.
Now the part where a lot of independent practices get carried away, and I am not going to. Corporate ownership is a fact about a business. It is not a verdict on the medicine. There are veterinarians and technicians I respect working inside every one of those groups, some of them friends of mine, and a corporate hospital with a strong medical director can deliver better care than a badly-run independent one. I have no interest in telling you otherwise, and I am not going to make claims about anyone else's prices or quality. Judge a practice on the practice.
What is fair to say is that ownership determines who is accountable to whom, and you are entitled to know which structure you are in. Here is how to find out about any clinic, including this one.
What independent ownership means here, concretely
Red Rock Veterinary Health is owned by me, a practicing veterinarian, and I work here. There is no parent company, no regional office, and no outside owner to answer to. That has three consequences you can actually check:
- Medical decisions are made in the exam room. The doctor seeing your pet — me, Dr. Dan Muelhaupt, or Dr. Jaime Clevenger — decides what your pet needs.
- We set our own schedule.Appointment lengths, how much time a Fear Free visit gets, how many same-day urgent slots we hold — those are decided in this building, by the people who have to live with them.
- The person responsible has a name and a face. If something goes wrong, you are talking to the owner, and the owner is a veterinarian.
Why Are Vets So Expensive?
This is the question people ask most often here, and most veterinary websites answer it defensively. I would rather just answer it.
The short version: you see the whole bill. In human medicine, an insurer absorbs most of the cost before a number ever reaches you. In veterinary medicine, most families pay out of pocket at the counter, so the real price of running a medical facility arrives all at once, attached to one visit. That is a genuine structural difference, not a markup. Here is what is actually inside it:
What you can reasonably demand is a number
None of the above justifies a surprise. If a practice will not tell you what an exam costs before you walk in, that is a choice they are making. Ours are published:
$79
Standard exam, starting
$109
Same-day urgent exam, starting
$999
Standard dental, starting
Those are current prices and they can change, so confirm when you book. The $999 dental covers the standard procedure; extractions and oral surgery are billed separately and we call you with an updated estimate before we do any of it. Everything past the exam — bloodwork, radiographs, medications — gets priced and discussed with you before it happens. If cost is the reason you are leaving your current practice, look at our payment plan options before you decide.
Before You Switch: When We Are the Wrong Choice
You should know this before you move your pet's care, not after. It is the most important thing on this page.
We are open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. That is all.
We are closed on weekends and holidays. We have no overnight staff. We do not run an after-hours on-call line, and nobody answers this phone at 11 p.m. We are a general practice — not an emergency hospital, not a specialty referral center.
If your household needs weekend access to your primary veterinarian, or if your pet has a condition where you expect to need overnight monitoring, we are honestly not the right practice for you and I would rather you know that now than find out on a Saturday. If that trade is workable, what you get in exchange is a small hospital where three doctors know your pet by name and hold space for same-day urgent appointments Monday through Friday. Availability depends on scheduling and staffing that day, so call early.
Animal ER Care
Uintah Pet Emergency
Colorado Springs, CO 80904
When your pet comes home from an emergency hospital, call us the next business morning. We request the ER records, reconcile the new medications with the regular ones, and schedule the recheck — the full after-hours playbook is in what to do if your pet has an emergency after our hours.
How to Transfer to Red Rock
Five steps, and we do most of them. Colorado Springs sees a large summer relocation wave every year, so if you have just arrived because of a move to Fort Carson, Peterson, Schriever, or the Academy, this is a well-worn path for us.
- 1Call (719) 204-3647, or text (719) 355-8343. You can also email Reception@RedRockVet.com if you would rather not talk to anyone yet. All three reach the same front desk.
- 2Tell us your name, your pet's name and species, and the name of your previous practice. That is genuinely all we need to start.
- 3Ask us and we can request the records for you, so you do not have to have the awkward conversation with your old clinic unless you want to. We ask for the full chart, not the summary.
- 4When the records arrive ahead of your visit, the doctor reads them before you come in, so you are not re-telling your pet's medical history from memory in an exam room.
- 5You come in Monday through Friday, between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. A standard exam is $79. If your pet is sick and it cannot wait, ask for a same-day urgent slot at $109.
A Small Fear Free Hospital on the Westside
Three veterinarians: me, Dr. Dan Muelhaupt, and Dr. Jaime Clevenger. One building at 3163 W. Colorado Ave, on the Westside. Our entire clinical team is Fear Free certified, and Red Rock is the only hospital in Colorado Springs that keeps dogs and cats in separate waiting, exam, and treatment areas — which is why a nervous cat coming from a lobby full of barking dogs often behaves like a different animal here. If your switch is driven by a cat who cannot handle the vet or a dog with real fear, that layout is the reason to look at us.
Beyond that, the ordinary work of a general practice, done properly: wellness and preventive care, chronic disease management for the pets who need it most, dentistry with full-mouth radiographs, surgery, allergy testing and treatment, and, when the time eventually comes, compassionate euthanasia with people who knew your pet.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about changing veterinarians in Colorado Springs.
Can I switch veterinarians, and is it rude to leave the practice I am with?+
Yes, you can switch, and no, it is not rude. You are your pet's decision-maker, you are paying for the care, and you can move that care at any time, for any reason, without explaining yourself. From the inside, a records request is ordinary administrative work; we send records out and receive them in every week. If you want a script: “I am moving my pet’s care to another practice. Please send a copy of the complete medical record to Red Rock Veterinary Health.” That is the whole conversation. You do not need to justify it, and a practice that makes you feel bad for asking has told you something useful.
How do I transfer my pet's medical records to a new veterinarian?+
Call or email your current practice and ask them to send a copy of the complete medical record to the new veterinarian. Ask by name for the full visit history, vaccination records, laboratory and bloodwork results, imaging and radiographs (the actual image files, not just the report), current medications with exact doses, and surgical and anesthetic records. Put the request in writing, even if you also call, so there is a record of when you asked. Then confirm with the receiving practice that it actually arrived, because transfers do get missed. If you are coming to us, you do not have to do any of this yourself: call (719) 204-3647, text (719) 355-8343, or email Reception@RedRockVet.com, and we can request the records for you.
Can a veterinarian refuse to release my pet's records, or hold them because I owe a balance?+
Here is the honest version. In most states the physical or electronic chart is the property of the practice that created it, and clients are customarily given a copy of the pet's medical history rather than the original file. We are not going to quote you a Colorado statute we have not verified; if you want the authoritative answer for Colorado, the Colorado State Board of Veterinary Medicine is the right place to ask. Practically: most practices send records without any friction, practices differ in how they handle a request while a balance is outstanding, and settling the balance removes the question entirely. Rabies and vaccination certificates may also be on file with the authority your pet is licensed with. If you get stuck, tell us and we will make the request from our side.
What should I ask a veterinarian before I move my pet's care there?+
Ask who owns the practice and who makes the medical decisions. Ask whether the same veterinarian will see your pet each visit, or whoever is on the schedule. Ask what the exam fee is, and whether you get an estimate before anything is done. Ask what the hours are and exactly what happens after those hours. Ask how they handle an anxious dog or a cat who hates the carrier. Ask what diagnostics are done in-house and how quickly you get results. Ask when they refer to a specialist and who they refer to. Ask how fast they can send your records if you ever leave. That last one tells you a great deal about a practice, and you should ask it of us too.
How can I tell whether my veterinary clinic is corporate owned?+
Three checks, in order of effort. First, read the website footer and the About page: corporate groups usually disclose it somewhere, often as a parent-company name or a phrase like “part of the family of hospitals.” Second, look the business entity up in the Colorado Secretary of State business database, which is free and public. Third, ask the front desk. It is a completely reasonable question and the answer should be immediate. For reference, the large groups in American veterinary medicine include Mars Veterinary Health, which owns both VCA and Banfield Pet Hospital, along with Thrive Pet Healthcare and Petco, which runs Vetco clinics. Corporate ownership is a fact about a business, not a verdict on its medicine. Plenty of excellent veterinarians work inside those groups.
Why are vets so expensive?+
Because you see the whole bill. In human medicine, insurance absorbs most of the cost before you ever see a number; in veterinary medicine, most families pay out of pocket at the time of service, so the true price of a medical facility lands in one visit. And it is a full medical facility: anesthesia machines and multiparameter monitors, digital radiography, dental radiography, ultrasound, an in-house laboratory, surgical instruments and sterilization, controlled-drug handling, and a credentialed team. None of that is optional if you want real medicine, and none of it is cheap. What you can reasonably demand is transparency. Ours: the standard exam is $79, the same-day urgent exam is $109, and a standard dental is $999, with extractions quoted separately. Anything beyond the exam gets priced and discussed with you before we do it.
How much does a first visit at Red Rock cost, and how do I become a client?+
A standard exam is $79 and a same-day urgent exam is $109. A standard dental procedure is $999; extractions and oral surgery are billed separately and always discussed with you first. These are our current prices and they can change, so ask when you book. To become a client, call (719) 204-3647, text (719) 355-8343, or email Reception@RedRockVet.com with your name, your pet's name and species, and the name of your previous practice. We can request the records for you, and we review whatever has arrived before your appointment. We are at 3163 W. Colorado Ave on the Westside, open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Are you open on weekends or overnight?+
No, and you should know that before you switch rather than after. We are open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. We are closed on weekends and holidays, we have no overnight staff, and we do not run an after-hours on-call line. If your household needs weekend or overnight access to your primary veterinarian, we are honestly not the right practice for you. For emergencies outside our hours, go to Animal ER Care at 5520 N. Nevada Ave, Ste 150, (719) 260-7141, open 24/7; or Uintah Pet Emergency at 1635 W. Uintah St, Ste E, (719) 633-3214, open daily from noon to midnight, which is not overnight. We take the handoff the next business morning.
Start the Switch
Call, text, or email. Tell us your pet's name and where the records live, and we will take it from there. We are open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and closed on weekends.
Address
3163 W. Colorado Ave
Colorado Springs, CO 80904
Hours
Monday-Friday: 8am-5pm
Closed Saturday & Sunday
No overnight or on-call service