Have vet license, will travel

House call vets offer convenience, peace of mind

Friday, Oct. 23, 2009

Practitioners aren't likely to get rich making house calls but the business model has much to recommend it, including independence and affordability, vets said.

Susan Gordon-Garcia started her La Plata-based Vet Med Mobile practice in order to work for herself and have the flexible schedule she needed.

"I wanted to be out on my own and I didn't have a million dollars for my practice, so I thought it would be a good way to start up without a huge investment," she said. "I have two kids, I was recovering from cancer, I thought, ‘This is something I can do [to] make my own schedule.' I enjoy interactions with people — I'm old-fashioned, and you go to the house and get to know the person, instead of a clinic, which tends to be more in-and-out."

She also appreciates being able to focus on medicine, not on the hassles of running a brick-and-mortar clinic, she said.

Tracey Daetwyler started her part-time house call practice about 10 years ago so she could take care of her children. She thinks everyone involved benefitted from the change.

"For me, working from both sides of it … I think its much nicer for the pets if what they have is routine health care needs. I think a lot of animals get stressed out coming into veterinary clinic, the waiting room, the steel table — a lot of pets get freaked out by that so I think its nicer for the pet," said Daetwyler, of Charlotte Hall. "From my end, the pro is that I can kind of set my own hours, where if I worked at a traditional clinic you kind of have to keep traditional hours."

Mobile practices allow vets to start their own businesses without the seed money needed to open a clinic. Candace Guyther of Leonardtown, whose Vet-a-Pet practice serves Southern Maryland and Anne Arundel County, said she tired of working at other people's practices and decided to copy what was then mainly a model for large animal medicine for her general practice.

Some mobile vets dispense with an office entirely, while Guyther keeps hers bare-bones. At her Beauvue Animal Hospital, "my office is in a stall" at her family's farm. "We cleaned out a couple stalls — the first is the exam room and the second is my office," she said.

Seeing patients at home has let some vets find problems they wouldn't have discovered by seeing patients at a clinic. Guyther has occasionally worked with animal control when an owner is neglectful.

"That's not often, but I worked with a young girl who had a horse. She did relatively well in the beginning with the horse … but then she went off to school," she said. After a neighbor of the Hughesville client called authorities, "I went on up there. I was horrified. I'd seen that horse from when he was a young horse and he was a rack of bones." The horse was rescued by an animal welfare group and made a slow but full recovery.

Carol Flake, based in Clinton, said diagnosis is easier when the patient is relaxed. In one case, this saved a life.

"One of the things I've found was that in some patients I could better assess them in a home situation. I had a patient — I was actually called out for euthanasia and was watching the cat walk around. … Because it was in the house, I could watch it. I was able to discuss other options. … Two years later the cat has responded to pain medications" and is still alive, Flake said.

Clients often call mobile vets for pet euthanasia because they don't want to take a pet to a stressful clinic to die, vets said.

"Most pets don't like getting in the car, going to the vet. It's not quiet, it's not peaceful. Most pets are happier in their own home with their own bed. It's not for everyone but most everyone is very thankful they can be with pet and hold it. Mainly I think it reduces the stress on the pet," Gordon-Garcia said.

"… Sometimes it's a matter of the dog. I see really big dogs that can't move and they can't get them in the car. That's another issue for people."

Still, "there are obstacles to being a mobile vet," including a limit to the services she can offer, she said. She refers cases she can't handle to one of several standing clinics she occasionally works at.

Some veterinarians have vans that enable them to do dentistry and minor surgery but she hasn't been able to invest in one.

Also, time is lost driving from place to place and home visits are generally more expensive than clinic appointments, according to the veterinarians interviewed. And, as with so many other things, clients seem to be curtailing spending on veterinary care because of the shaky economy. But many pet owners are still determined to do right by their companions, Gordon-Garcia said.

emitrano@somdnews.com