When you arrive for Urgent Care, sick visits or surgery, drive straight back towards the barn and park in the convenient spots at the front of the Hospital. Please come into the red front door and we will greet you there.

LVH started providing Urgent Care during COVID because so many people got pets during the pandemic and the Emergency rooms were overwhelmed.  Veterinary Medicine (Vet Med) was already short on veterinarians and veterinary technicians, so with the huge influx of pet owners, many professionals left the industry.  Whether it was older folks who didn’t want to risk working during the pandemic or were already close to retirement, many left the field completely.  This left a huge shortage of staff and an implosion of workload.  Burn-out continued to plague the overtaxed industry.

As natural disasters continue to happen and America moves pets around en mass away from disasters to safer locations, we have also introduced viral, parasitic and bacterial loads to geographic areas that weren’t accustomed to managing these new bugs.  Each vet professional was challenged in multiple ways-the increased case load and the stress of seeing new things and adjusting to managing them is a lot to deal with.

Unfortunately, during COVID many businesses shut down, at least temporarily, or stopped taking new clients.  The families with new pets had nowhere to take their new family member!  It was a terrible time.  LVH decided that we would never turn away sick pets.  We wanted all families to have somewhere to take their sick pets to help keep them out of the ER’s, which were and continue to be backed up and over-burdened.

Urgent Care at LVH was born.  LVH decided to dedicate a few days a week to let all pet owners have a middle level place to go.  We are NOT an ER but we don’t schedule Urgent Care like a regular vet practice does.  What’s the difference?  Well, ERs are capable of taking in everything, anytime. Pieper Olson Veterinary in Middletown, has ER doctors 24 hours a day!  Your local veterinary practice is typically appointment only, generally 9-5, routine care and surgeries.  Urgent Care covers new ground for the veterinary community.  Unlike your regular veterinary practice, LVH doesn’t just keep a few “sick pet” spots open in our schedule each day.  LVH keeps an entire doctor open for an entire shift and only fills it up that morning when people or other hospitals start calling.  We are appointment only but same day.  We still see our own clients for same day sick but anything that rises to the level of Urgent Care for our clients or new friends can be seen right away.

Please see our attached chart to see what Urgent Care covers same day.  LVH is open several days a week to 8:00 pm and we hope to soon offer every workday evening until 8:00 pm! Stay tuned as we continue to expand this service!