Lowcountry dogs and cats are getting a new place to go for emergency medical care, 24-7
Come summer of 2022, pet owners in Beaufort and Hardeeville will no longer have to make panicked drives to Charleston to get emergency medical care for their pets in the middle of the night.
A 24-hour emergency animal hospital has been missing from the area and has become even more necessary as the population grows, according to New River Veterinary Specialists Medical Director Kristin Welch.
“It’s been such a long time coming,” Welch said. “You wait with bated breath for everything to kind of fall into place over many many months, and it is such a huge relief and huge source of excitement to see our vision come to life.”
Construction on the veterinary hospital will begin on Friday. It will be located at the New River Center in Hardeeville. The hospital is only for dogs and cats, Welch said.
It will have an on-site animal blood bank, a CT scanner with 3-D reconstruction and an underwater treadmill for animals who need physical therapy.
The hospital is being set up by Welch and fellow veterinarians Jeff Davis and Matthew Nathan. Welch said they plan to open their doors by May or June and that the hospital will serve as a specialty medical care center as well as a 24-hour emergency clinic.
“It’s not just emergency,” Welch said. “There’s Monday to Saturday scheduled appointments to get a consult in surgery, ophthalmology, dermatology, internal medicine and all of the different areas you would come in to have a specialist consult at the direction of your veterinarian.”
It will act as a sounding board “to support” general practitioners in the area, Welch said.
“One of the important parts of being a specialty hospital like this is we don’t ever take away from the business of general practitioners,” Welch said.
Because of this, she said, the hospital does not accept wellness checkups or vaccination appointments or sell heartworm or flea and tick medication, according to Welch.
“That’s our goal, to be able to help the community and be able to do what we love which is practicing high-level medicine and caring for all these pets,” Welch said.
This story was originally published October 3, 2021 at 11:35 AM.
