When friends Keith Moore and Dr. Erin Van Dokkenburg (who both grew up on farms) met each other in 2013 at the veterinary hospital where they both worked, they discovered their mutual desire to practice excellent medicine. Their friendship blossomed as they joked around while both of them tried to change the hospital’s protocols.
Now, 11 years later, they have opened their new queer co-owned Fauna Veterinary Care clinic in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood inside the Lawrence Loft apartment complex at the site of the historic Viceroy Hotel building. The mission, according to their website, “is to deliver exemplary veterinary service by utilizing the highest standard of care and prioritizing client-centered education and support.”
Their journey began when Moore left that hospital after he finished graduate school for a full-time position at a clinic in Lake View and convinced Van Dokkenburg to join him. After working there for seven years, they decided to open Fauna.
“We got tired of watching other practices let the quality of medicine slip in order to make more money, and run us in the ground to do it,” said Moore. “We decided that if we were going to work that hard, we were going to do it for ourselves. Also, we wanted to set the culture of a clinic on our own and treat our team better than other clinics did…as middle management.”
“Clinical team members (receptionists, assistants, and technicians) leave this field in droves,” said Van Dokkenburg. “We have an incredibly high-turnover rate industry wide, and something like 40% of clinical team members who enter this field (even if they go to school to be a technician) leave the field and never return in about 6 years.”
Moore (the clinic’s practice manager) and Van Dokkenburg (the clinic’s medical director and veterinarian) offered full benefits to their team and give them space to call their own at the clinic, including a full break room with lockers and a changing/lactation room for new mothers.
The business is named Fauna since Moore and Van Dokkenburg both like plants. When they were brainstorming potential names, it came down to two choices, Flora and Fauna.
“Fauna is what stuck,” said Moore.
“With a whole lot of Flora, everywhere in our clinic,” said Van Dokkenburg.
Moore added, “Who doesn’t love a little forest bathing?”
Van Dokkenburg said that people can expect “a lot of green” when they arrive, along with “friendly faces and a lot of laughter.”
Moore added that “we want to know all your pet’s secrets and embarrassing moments, nicknames, etc. So far the best one is ‘Steven Wiener, Mayor of Pee Town.’”
They are working on a welcome board that will ask pet owners to “spill the tea.”
“We hoped that our design features and plants as decorations would help dogs feel more at home as if they were at the dog park,” said Moore.
“We also have a separate cat waiting room, cat exam rooms and cat kennel room for when they stay with us for the day, so they are less likely to get stressed out from the smells and sounds of dogs around them,” said Van Dokkenburg.
Both Moore and Van Dokkenburg said that it is important for patrons to know this is a queer co-owned business because they want to be at the forefront as veterinary medicine evolves to be more inclusive and diverse. They have made their business a healing space for everyone.
“I have worked in plenty of positions over the years, and encountered a less than welcoming attitude towards women (despite being a female dominated profession) and queer folx,” said Van Dokkenburg. “It was also important for us to ensure that if our employees chose to have kids, they would not be punished for it at work.”
“We wanted to create a safe space for our team and our clients so they know no one is going to judge them or make derogatory comments about them once they leave,” said Moore.
Fauna Veterinary Care Technician Brooce Zebrun said she likes her job because “communication, collaborative interpersonal relationships and healthy boundaries are a huge part of my queer experience, and I feel like that is really well-represented at Fauna. It’s so clear every day that Keith and Erin are committed to building a great team where the staff are listened to and cared for without those weird ‘we’re a family’ vibes.”
Van Dokkenburg said they are “thrilled to be back in the area and are super excited to be a part of Uptown/Edgewater/Andersonville” and Moore added that “we’ve found that the neighborhood has been very welcoming and we hope once the Red Line stop at Lawrence reopens, we will be even more accessible to folx in the area.”
Moore also gives back to the LGBTQ community as the Legacy Project Chicago volunteer curator. His focus is the Gay Chicago Archive collection of over 100,000 photographs.
“My job is to organize them, find duplicates and move them to appropriate archival housing,” said Moore. My goal is to have them digitized so they can be searched and viewed by the public. This is a passion project of mine, and now that Fauna is open for business, I will dive back into this work again after a short hiatus.”