The Bond Between Veterinary Center 

The Bond Between Veterinary Center is one of Minnesota’s first nonprofit veterinary clinics. But it started as something completely different: a scrappy rescue operation called Secondhand Hounds…one that dared to ask a bold question about its bottom line.

As a rescue, Secondhand Hounds was spending $1 million a year outsourcing medical care for rescued animals. To offset that expense, why not open a clinic staffed by mission-driven veterinarians so they could care for rescued animals and serve the public, too?

The unconventional idea paid off. Since opening the Veterinary Center in 2019, all proceeds have flowed directly back into the organization’s rescue and community engagement programs. The rescue-turned-nonprofit-clinic, renamed The Bond Between in 2024, has rescued over 35,000 dogs and cats, while also providing top-notch veterinary care for rescues and pets in the Twin Cities area.

Even before the transition, Secondhand Hounds relied on practice management software — now known as Covetrus Pulse — to run the rescue. For years, the basics worked well to manage foster animal care, medical records, and scheduling.

But as the non-profit evolved and opened its doors to the public, new needs emerged. After adding two full-time veterinarians and support staff to care for both foster patients and area pets, the team knew they needed to move beyond the basics.

In order to grow their client-facing revenue stream to better fund the rescue mission, The Bond Between needed to leverage every advantage the Covetrus technology platform has to offer.

Growing a public-facing veterinary practice is a different discipline than running a rescue operation — and The Bond Between was learning that in real time.

The clinic faced three primary pain points:

• Client communication relied on email and phone calls, which was inefficient for a busy clinic team.
• Clinic payments were processed on the same system the rescue used for adoption fees — functional for simple transactions, but not built for a full-service clinic.
• The clinic’s online pharmacy was underutilized, leaving clients to fill prescriptions through other third-party retailers.

The team knew Covetrus veterinary clinic software was capable of more, explains Carrie Openshaw, Vice President of Community Engagement for The Bond Between.

“We really wanted to lean into that client-facing portion so we could drive that revenue stream,” she recalls. “But being a public-facing clinic — that’s new to us. So we reached out to find out what more we could be doing with the software.”

The Covetrus team had plenty of suggestions, Openshaw says. “They came right back with ‘Here are the tools that you could use, and here are the options, and here’s what it looks like,’” she recounts. “They took time to give us demos. It was really amazing.”

Working with the Covetrus team, The Bond Between expanded their use of the veterinary software platform across three interconnected areas.

Covetrus Communications: Replacing Phone Tag with Integrated Texting

The single most impactful change The Bond Between made was implementing Covetrus Comms, the client messaging tool built into Pulse.

“We did decide to implement Covetrus Comms, which was probably the most important to us because we wanted the ability to text our clients. It has saved us a ton of time, just being able to communicate back and forth with people during the day without having to constantly pick up the phone.”

— Carrie Openshaw, VP of Community Engagement, The Bond Between Vet Center

The shift from phone-and-email to integrated text messaging freed up front-desk staff significantly — especially during packed lobby hours when a quick text could replace a lengthy phone exchange.

But the value extends beyond convenience. Because all communications live within the patient record — not scattered across individual email inboxes — any team member can see a complete client contact history at a glance.

When the clinic learned of an unexpected staff shortage late one evening, the team logged into Pulse remotely — from home, after hours — and used Comms to send appointment reminders for the next morning without a single phone call. “The whole world runs on texting these days. People expect it,” Openshaw notes. “And a lot of people hate talking on the phone. So this benefits everyone.”

What stood out most to Openshaw was the client support Covetrus provided during implementation. The practice’s client data needed significant cleanup before Comms could be fully activated — missing cell numbers, unchecked SMS permissions, incomplete addresses. “The team was so great in helping us clean that stuff up,” Openshaw says.

“We made quite a few calls into support because it was all new to us. And every single time they just figured it out for us really quickly,” she notes. “I don’t expect that level of support from most vendors. Covetrus really exceeded that.”

Covetrus Payments: Built for a Clinic, Not a Rescue

The rescue’s web team used Stripe for online donations. But as a public clinic, the Bond Between needed more than a payment processor — it needed a payment solution purpose-built for a busy veterinary practice. Covetrus Payments, embedded in Pulse, gave them exactly that.

And the transition came with an immediate benefit. During one conversation with The Bond Between, the Covetrus team pointed out that many veterinary clinics were already passing the credit card processing fee on to clients as a surcharge. The Bond Between wasn’t.

“We actually called around to vet clinics in the area and asked, ‘Do you charge this?’ And most of them did,” says Openshaw. “We were very happy to be able to flip the little switch and start charging that back.”

The switch to Covetrus Payments also unified the organization’s financial infrastructure. Rather than managing a separate payment processor layered on top of their practice management system, payment processing is built directly into Pulse — so transactions, patient records, and billing all live in one connected platform. For a team already stretched thin, eliminating that friction was a huge operational win.

Modern Covetrus card readers were deployed throughout the clinic, and the team quickly discovered features their old system never offered. Text-to-Pay became a fast favorite because it simplified common bottlenecks, like when volunteers or staff brought their own pets in for care, but bypassed checkout. Now, all it takes is a quick payment link to close that gap without any awkwardness, Openshaw says.

Perhaps the most meaningful improvement: Because Covetrus Payments is embedded in Pulse, the amount a client owes auto-populates on the payment screen without anyone having to type it in. “That has stopped quite a few errors,” Openshaw notes. For a nonprofit where every dollar helps save more rescues, that accuracy matters.

vRxPro: Keeping Prescriptions (and Revenue) In-House

With a lean in-clinic inventory focused on immediate needs, The Bond Between relies on vRxPro — Covetrus’s cloud-based online pharmacy platform — to ensure that routine and recurring prescriptions stay within the practice, rather than migrating to other third-party online retailers.

“We’re just trying to make it as easy for our clients as we can,” says Openshaw. “And the online pharmacy is a good way to do it.”

“It was really awesome that we learned we could steer people towards certain drugs and customize pictures … We’re just trying to make it as easy for our clients as we can so they don’t have to try and get their prescriptions anywhere else.”

— Carrie Openshaw, VP of Community Engagement, The Bond Between Vet Center

The clinic learned how to customize communications to feature specific products and brands that align with their prescribing preferences and pharmaceutical relationships. They also mention the online pharmacy during exams, steering clients toward home delivery and AutoShip for maintenance medications like preventatives. “If somebody wants their annual supply, we recommend they use the online pharmacy,” Openshaw says.

Pricing is set to be competitive with other third-party retailers, and new clients who set up AutoShip receive 30% off — a meaningful incentive for pet parents who might otherwise default to a big-box alternative.

The astounding result of these efforts: a 78% year-over-year increase in pharmacy revenue — a figure The Bond Between didn’t even realize until their Covetrus Clinical Growth Advisor shared the numbers during a recent phone call.

What started as a bold financial question has grown into something larger: a groundbreaking model of mission-driven veterinary care that proves a clinic can do well and do good at the same time. And with the Covetrus platform supporting its efforts, The Bond Between is poised for success.

Here’s what’s on the horizon: The Bond Between is expanding its community medicine program — providing low-cost, low-barrier care, including vaccine clinics and work in tribal communities. Currently, much of this work is managed on paper. And Openshaw sees Covetrus Pulse as the right platform to bring the program to scale.

Pulse’s AI features are also on the near-term horizon. With veterinarians spending significant time on documentation — SOAP notes, treatment summaries, patient file updates — Openshaw sees automation as the natural next step. “Our doctors are spending so much time taking notes and recaps and adding things to patient files that probably could be automated by AI,” she says. “It’s got to be the wave of the future for us, too.”

With continued support from their Covetrus Clinical Growth Advisor team, The Bond Between is also focused on deepening online pharmacy utilization, refining client marketing, and exploring payment innovations. Because every capability the Covetrus platform helps them unlock translates directly into more animal lives saved.

Request a demo today to see how Covetrus technology solutions can transform your veterinary practice.