RICHMOND, Va. -- In the early morning hours on Saturday, Denise Alvin said her seven-year-old dog Crosby started acting weird.
"His eyes were just huge, and I could tell he wasn't breathing well," Alvin said.
The family took Crosby to Veterinary Referral & Critical Care in Manakin-Sabot. In about 15 minutes, he was diagnosed with a collapsed lung. An emergency team was called to place tubes in Crosby's chest.
"The surgeon called in the morning and said, 'Hey, we need to make arrangements because we close at 6 p.m. today. And I'm like, 'What do you mean, make arrangements?' And they said we would have to find another place to take Crosby because he's not ready to go home, he still needs care," Alvin said.
VRCC would open again at 8 a.m. on Monday morning. Alvin was told she'd have to transport Crosby to and from home once the VRCC closed, but Crosby still needed to be under the care of a veterinarian.
Alvin said VRCC tried to connect the family with Virginia Veterinary Center on Cary Street, the only emergency vet clinic open 24 hours on Saturday, but at the time, they were full. The only other option Alvin had was to drive anywhere from one to three hours away to get emergency help.
Alvin said she felt uncomfortable driving Crosby, given his state of health following the surgery, but was willing to do what she could to have someone else transport him.
"I said, 'I just want him some place.' I wanted to give him every chance we could, to come back to us," Alvin said. "He was perfect."
While the Alvin family tried to figure out where to take Crosby, he experienced respiratory and cardiac arrest. Around noon on Saturday, he passed away.
While Alvin said she believed Crosby would not have likely survived, even with emergency care, she worries about other pets that might have a chance if more options were available, including transportation services led by veterinary experts.
"For my husband and I, for our family, it was very frustrating and very anxiety-provoking to have to think about having to do this for him. And I just think about all of those other pets that are there, that have to go through the same thing as their families," Alvin said. "It's just heart-wrenching because there's no real option other than doing it yourself."
So why are there so few options?
"There has to be some answer to this, besides worrying about it on the weekend if your pet gets sick," Alvin said.
Christine Stafford with Partner Veterinary Care says it's due to severe staffing shortages nationwide that cannot keep up with the demand for emergency care.
"A lot of people got a lot of pets during the pandemic, that explosion of care needing to be provided," Stafford said.
That shortage, Stafford says, is due to a number of factors
"Due to stresses, due to burnout, due to high suicide rates. And that's affecting Richmond," Stafford said. "It's not that we don't want to, we want to provide the care, there's just not enough teams around."
Stafford said over the weekend, urgent and emergency clinics are filled up with patients. Almost every weekend, families are encouraged to take their pets anywhere from two to three hours away for available care.
Partner Veterinary Care is expanding, planning on having a new facility in Short Pump that will be open 24 hours come 2023. While Stafford is encouraging urgent care services, she said some practices will be limited in what kind of services they can provide.
"Urgent care will help really alleviate some of the pressures, but it's not going to alleviate all of the pressures," Stafford said. "Urgent care is only set up to do so much."
Stafford is encouraging pet owners to have a plan in place in case an emergency does occur. She said the only thing that will likely alleviate the problem is getting more people in the veterinary profession so that families won't have to lose a loved one.
"Walking around the house, he's not here," Alvin said. "And it's hard. I know people say he's just an animal, but he's not. He's part of our family."
