Tri-parish clinic specializes in weekend calls

Three local veterinarians have joined forces to offer the first emergency animal clinic in the area, the Tri-Parish Animal Emergency Clinic.

Few animal clinics offer emergency care with 24-hour access 52 weekends out of the year. Local veterinarians Drs. Lonnie De La Houssaye, Glenn Walthers and Bill Marcello saw a need for it in their individual practices.

According to De La Houssaye, veterinarians are required to ensure that animals under their care have help available to them at all times, making it difficult to schedule non-work activities over the weekends.

The Tri-Parish Animal Emergency Clinic opened in July 2007. It gives local veterinarians a place to direct their patients on weekends and offers residents without a primary veterinarian a place to get emergency care for their pets.

“We are pretty much here to serve the community as an emergency place for all the local vets if they have plans or other commitments over the weekends. With us, (veterinarians) can ensure that their patients will be taken care of while they are away,” De La Houssaye said.

Prior to the clinic’s opening, Tri-parish residents would travel as far as New Orleans and LaPlace to seek pet care if their regular vet was unavailable on the weekend.

The clinic opens Saturdays at 1 p.m. and closes Mondays at 7 a.m.

“The animals receive the same around-the-clock care over the weekend as they would during the weekdays,” De La Houssaye said.

Drs. Peter Gros and Café Lawson, two veterinarians who specialize in emergency pet care, head the weekend clinic.

The duo were hired by De La Houssaye, Walthers and Marcello.

“The vets are similar to regular emergency room physicians. They rotate weekends. Each vet has two support staff employees working with them at all times – one technician and the receptionist,” he said.

De La Houssaye’s Animal Hospital in Gray houses the emergency clinic.

Gros and Lawson can perform surgery, X-rays, blood analysis, ultrasounds and other medical treatments depending on the emergency.

“Some weekends, more than 10 pets come through these doors. On other weekends, 30 to 40 will come in with some type of emergency,” De La Houssaye said.

The emergency clinic is for smaller pets like dogs, cats and small exotic animals only.

“This is not a large animal facility,” he said. “We do not have the capability of making home visits for animals and it’s kind of hard for pet owners to transport big animals to the vet for an emergency.”

The clinic can also kennel up to 30 to 40 animals overnight.

In the event the hospital is unable to treat an animal, the vets on-call can stabilize the animal for transfer to another emergency clinic. Primarily, the weekend emergencies are the same that vets see on weekdays: broken bones, sickness and internal injuries.

If pets have to be hospitalized over the weekend, they are referred back to their primary veterinarian for further care. If pet owners do not have a primary vet, De La Houssaye suggests that one be sought.

“It is recommended that all pet owners have a veterinarian for routine and preventive care,” he said.

Once the pet returns home, pet owners are given a copy of the exact medical treatment the animal received. Regular or referral vets also receive a copy of the treatment.

“The pets can stay here, but once they are healthy enough, we send them home. Their owners are responsible for getting them to their regular vets for further treatment if needed,” De La Houssaye said.

“Our facility mainly helps veterinarians have a weekend away from the job,” he added.