Who's that dog?

Give your patients a license to board with custom pet ID cards, suggests Collin Babcock, the practice owner and manager at McCune Animal Hospital in Eagle Rock, Mo. "We used to give clients a full-page vaccine certificate, but our clients weren't impressed, and they ended up leaving it or trashing it," Babcock says. "Inevitably when they boarded pets at another facility, they didn't have proof of the pet's kennel cough vaccine. So we had to call the boarding facility or print another certificate." The new solution: a certificate that would fit in a purse or wallet.

Team members already take pictures of pets for cage card labels, so it was easy to adapt these photos to fit on business card paper stock. Then they added critical data on vaccinations, heartworm testing, fecal testing, birth date, and so on—and volia! Pet ID badges made to order. "They've been a colossal success," Babcock says. "Our boarding IDs look like a driver's license and we joke about pets driving home now that they're legal. They've made our clinic really stand out—our ID cards are the talk of the town. And it makes checking in for boarding anywhere easy for clients. The card is in their wallet."