Animal Emergency Clinic
By: Nicole Sanchez
Updated: August 3, 2007
Emergencies can strike anytime; fortunately emergency rooms are open 24 hours a day. But what happens if something happens to your pet in the middle of the night. Local Veterinarians have joined forces to create an after-hours emergency clinic, which may just save your best friend's life. Nicole Sanchez has more. Like humanbeings, animals can't choose when or how they become ill.
"The pets just don't get sick during business hours," says Dr. Guy Sheppard from Southside Animal Hospital.
And for this unexpected timing of pets becoming sick the Concho Valley Veterinary Emergency Association consisting of 16 Concho Valley Veterinarians including Dr. Sheppard at Southside Animal Hospital combined this service to accomplish the goal of providing critical, emergency and urgent care for the small animals after business hours.
"We voted on May 2 to do this and to join together, we actually look up the start up money and offered our members in mid-June and then we set the optimistic start date of August 1st. So we had our first night last night," Sheppard says.
This pet style emergency room opens its doors at 5:30 PM and closes at 8:00 AM every weekday, weekend and also holidays. It's the first kind overnight hospital in town, with a staff of close to five people of various veterinary clincis across town. August 1st was their first night opened, it was a busy one with over 10 pets that went in for emergency care.
"At least 3 or 4 of those last night would of not made the night if they could of not gotten care, last night the rest of them, it made their life even easier. It made treatments better today, our procedure is at the end of the shift, the next day, that animal is transferred to their regualar veterinarian," Sheppard says.
It's not just a service that that can help make the pets life an easier one, but also their owners.
Sheppard says, "This way we know, that there's somebody there and ready to see us and we don't have to inconvenience anyone and we can get the care when we need it."
