Indiana Animal Hospital Left Behind With Medication, a Locked Safe and an X Ray Machine

This is a vet clinic in Indiana that still has most of its medicine on the shelves and part of its roof on the floor. The exact location stays off this page.

What made the video is the x ray machine in the back. Its inspection notice ran out years before the building was emptied, and we spent the last stretch of the explore working out what that meant.

What we found

The first room had an old tub that looked like it was for bathing animals. Nail polish on a shelf, a pile of puppy care kits, then the kennel runs. The roof over the runs was collapsing, the sun was coming straight through, and the mold was heavy. I had just said the surgical tables were cool, and then the ceiling gave me a reason to stop saying things.

The shelves were still stocked. Vitamin B complex, calamine lotion, IV sets, an animal clipper, insect spray, roach killer, flea and tick spray. We found euthanasia solution twice and a bottle of formaldehyde. There were needles on the floor in more than one room, and we kept hearing what sounded like a rat or a mouse.

The front desk area had a dog size chart, an anatomy poster of the canine eye, and an old Heartguard ad about heartworm. A calendar on the wall was stuck on December 2004. I took that as the year they closed, and it was the closest thing to a date we found. Behind the desk there was a huge safe that did not open, shelves of paperwork and records, and mixing instructions for the medicine that was spilled across the floor.

Upstairs was the living quarters, and there was almost nothing left in it. The floor was giving out, so I stopped partway across. The walls looked water damaged, not smoke damaged. Back on the ground floor it turned out the whole building was Noah’s Ark themed. Arks and animals everywhere, a hospital deposit sign, a typewriter, a doll, dog tags, an old camera, muzzles, and a magazine with Princess Diana on the cover. In one spot there had been an electrical fire. The char was on the walls, but it did not look like it got far.

Then the x ray machine. It’s huge, and one of the wires looked cut. The notice of compliance on the wall said the machine had been inspected by a board approved physicist, and the survey on it was due in 2000. A certificate of inspection nearby looked like it ran out even earlier, in 1998. If the calendar is right they kept working for about four years after that. I said it was probably radioactive and didn’t stay near it.

The basement was the last stop. The stairs held except for the top step, and there was a big hole in the floor near the bottom. Down there we found newspapers, another small bath, a floor drain, what looked like a litter box and a food dish, and bandages. A couple of signs said private keep out, which I read the way I always do, as a reason to look. Old glasses sat in one corner, untouched.

Why places like this end up empty

A vet clinic that closes the normal way gets emptied. The American Veterinary Medical Association’s guidance for owners lists disposing of pharmaceuticals and equipment, collecting debts, notifying staff, clients and vendors, and keeping copies of medical records in case a client sues years later. It frames closing as something an owner plans for, usually around retirement, by selling to an associate or a corporation or by staying on part time.

This place did none of that. The medicine is on the shelves, the records are in the office and the safe is still shut. I can’t tell you why. Nothing we found explained it, and I’m not going to guess past the calendar.

I can correct something I said, though. I called the x ray machine radioactive. The Health Physics Society, which answers questions from the public through health physicists, says x rays are only present while the unit is energized to produce them. As soon as the exposure is over, there is no radiation left in the machine, the room or the areas around it. A dead machine with a cut wire isn’t giving off anything. The mold, the needles, the roof and the floors were the real hazards in that building.

Everything else in the building was left like the staff had a shift to finish. The calendar still says December 2004.