If it’s the middle of the night and your sick pet needs emergency care, you can’t exactly dial 911. But frantically searching the yellow pages for veterinarians in this area who offer 24-hour emergency service won’t help either. While there are sometimes ways to get in touch with local veterinarians in the dead of night, don’t expect to find an animal hospital in Hudson County that is open 24 hours. Hudson pet owners looking for a round-the-clock facility must make commute of between half hour and an hour to the West Caldwell Animal Emergency Center in Essex County, the Oradell Animal Hospital in Bergen County or the Animal Medical Center on 62nd Street in Manhattan. Local animal hospitals are not open 24 hours, but sometimes ask owners to leave a message on their voice-answering service and wait for a response from a doctor who is on call. “We’re not open 24 hours, but after we close, we are still available for emergencies,” said Edward Torres, the administrator at the North Bergen Animal Hospital, recently. “The pet owner would call and get the answering machine, which pages the doctor, who would in turn call back the owner and arrange a meeting. I know of a couple of situations where people came to our parking lot in the middle of the night waiting for us to open because they thought that we were open 24 hours. Then they call[ed] the number and they realize[d] what to do.” Most animal hospitals with 24-hour emergency service operate like the one in North Bergen. “Ninety-five percent of all vets in the world do not have 24-hour opening,” said Dr. Michael Tuder of the Animal Infirmary of Hoboken last week. “We are not here. We have a doctor on call.” “The reason why we are not physically here 24 hours is a cost issue,” Torres said. “Extra costs for staff, utilities, and so forth. And we don’t necessarily have emergencies every night.” The answering machine at Animal General Hospital in Edgewater gives the numbers for the 24-hour animal hospitals in Oradell and New York City when they are not open (see sidebar). Two animal hospitals contacted for the article, the Animal Clinic and Hospital of Jersey City and Ambassador Veterinary Hospital in Union City, said they were not interested in providing information about their emergency service. Most of the hospitals contacted recommended one of the three aforementioned all-night facilities, if needed. But local residents said they wish there were closer facilities. “It would be nice to have a local place that is actually open 24 hours a day,” said pet owner Tomoko Smith of Hoboken. “One time my husband and I found a ferret and it was 12 midnight and we didn’t know what to do with it. It would have been good if we could have taken him somewhere that was open at that time.” Smith took the ferret to her home for the night and to a hospital the next morning. Most pet owners understand the reason for the lack of 24-hour services, said Hoboken resident Ashley Brophy, who owns two cats and a dog. “I mean, it’s the same thing with us,” Brophy said. “Your family physician is not in the office 24 hours a day, but is on call 24 hours.” Jay Prius, a Jersey City resident who picks up stray cats and dogs, said he is satisfied with emergency response from local hospitals. “They usually get back to you within 45 minutes or so, depending on the emergency,” he said. “If it’s a real emergency, they might get back to you within five minutes. I’ve been through that situation before. If they can’t see you at that time then they’ll refer you to an all-night hospital. But I use the Hoboken Animal Hospital, and they’ve always been there for me.” Hoboken resident Vincent Ganino said he had to use the Oradell hospital, 30 minutes away, in an emergency after he had trouble getting help at the hospital he normally uses. “Oradell was so professional, and so caring it was unbelievable,” he said. “I would have traveled there from Hoboken for the last five years if I had known.” Ganino, whose dog was put to sleep a day later, added, “It was a really tough time, to lose a pet like that. The [local animal hospital] called back and said they were sorry, saying they really cared about my pet, but if that’s caring about a pet, I think you’re in the wrong business.” Aida Morrero, a Jersey City resident who owns a dog, has also lost faith in the reliability of local animal emergency services. “My brother had found an abandoned kitten, and it was on a Sunday,” Morrero said. “My sister and I tried calling all of these different vets listed in the yellow pages, and she left her name and number and no one got back to her.” The kitten was nursed and taken to a vet the following day, said Morrero. “I just wish they were more services available for pets,” she said. “I have never had a situation where I’ve had to take any of my dogs in for emergency care, thank God,” said Mercy Garcia, who works at the Furry Tail Pet Sitting Service in Union City. But she recommended the North Bergen Animal Hospital, saying she’d even heard of them doing home visits. The director of the North Bergen Animal Hospital, Dr. Gerald Buchoff, said that homes are only visited occasionally, and only if absolutely necessary. “Sometimes we’ll say to the client that it’s really not an emergency,” he said. “But ultimately, the owner will decide if they want to bring in their pet.” Both Buchoff and Tuder agreed that most emergency cases involve problems like excessive vomiting, bloating, urinary blockage and seizures. “About 20 percent of all animals brought in for emergency attention need surgery,” said Tuder. “Lacerations, gun shot wounds, an animal giving birth, and getting hit by a car are all things that need immediate surgeries.” During an emergency, “time is everything” said Torres. He added that a few doctors are required to live near the hospital for a quick response to emergency calls. For instance, Dr. Mekheal Mandouh lives so close to the North Bergen Animal Hospital that his second-floor bedroom window can be seen from the hospital. “About 80 percent of the time we get here before the client,” said Torres. “We’ll go out of our way if we have to. The animals come first.” Torres said he once performed CPR on a dying rabbit, “And I’m allergic to rabbits big time. It wasn’t breathing, and I put my mouth on its mouth and began blowing into it. It kind of came back for a while and then I paged one of the doctors but it didn’t make it. A little later my face just blew up and it was like that for hours.” Costs vary for emergency care. There will often be an extra charge if the visit is done on an emergency basis. Operations can run from several hundred to several thousands of dollars. Mandouh said that people are willing to spend a great amount of money on their pets because of the unconditional love they give. “Your girlfriend, your brother, they change,” Mandouh said. “But your pet never changes.” Doctors said owners should not wait until the last minute to get medical attention for their pets. Tuder said that, for example, he’d heard of people calling for emergency service only after their dog had been vomiting for three days. A keen observance of a pet’s behavior might be the best way to offset the need for emergency service, doctors said. Warning signs of an illness can include a change in a pet’s eating and drinking habits (such as loss of appetite or excessive drinking), lethargic or less playful behavior, constant licking of a certain body part, and biting of the tail.
Local pet owners stymied by lack of off-hour emergency care
