Entrepreneurial Vet Brings At-Home Care to Saint John Pets
SAINT JOHN – Katie Bell always wanted to be a vet, for real.
“I was that quintessential little kid who grew up being like ‘I wanna be a vet when I grow up!’ I was legitimately that kid,” she says.
“I was always a big animal lover. My first love was my cat Dove and I was picking up whatever sad creature I found on the side of the road. My poor family.”
Bell actually did become a vet, and for three years she worked at the Mayfield Veterinary Clinic in St. Stephen. She got a feel for the profession and loved working with animals, however, working in a clinic setting wasn’t for her.
“Working in a clinic was not where I really felt happy,” Bell says. “Which was very disappointing to me, because I worked so hard for so long to become a vet.”
However, there was one day every month where she couldn’t wait to go to work.
“I looked forward every month to one day where I would go on house calls all day. I was really excited at the prospect of that when it was mentioned to me when I started working at that clinic,” Bell says. “It was just a thing that they did, so every month I just waited for the day where I could go for house calls.”
Then last year, Bell got pregnant. So while she was on maternity leave, she and her husband moved home to Saint John to be closer to family. She had about a year to reevaluate where she wanted to take her career next.
“I spent that year on maternity leave trying to think of a business that could mean that I didn’t go back to work in a clinic … then all of a sudden it just kind of dawned on me like ‘jeez, I wonder if one of the practices already here would be interested in having a house call service as part of their practice.'”
Bell reached out to the clinic where her husband worked, Kannon Animal Hospital in Saint John. But after discussing the idea with the clinic, they decided it made more sense for Bell to operate her mobile practice while the clinic would act as her support.
“A house call practice needs to have a clinic they are associated with who they can say ‘if I need XYZ, I can go here,'” Bell says. “I don’t actually have an affiliation where I have to send things to certain clinics, but I have a clinic that’s really there for me if I need them and if I find a patient that doesn’t already have a vet, that’s where I send them.”
Seaside Home Veterinary Care has been operating since early September and is the only exclusively mobile vet in the Saint John region. Bell can offer anything that isn’t major surgery or x-rays. She can do needles, blood work, vaccines, infections and palliative care. She also offers at-home euthanasia, one of her most requested services.
“People like to be able to say goodbye to their pet without the trip,” Bell says. “Some people would rather that happen in a clinic because it’s hard for them to remember it being in their homes, but other people are so comforted, understandably, by not giving their pet the idea that something is going on.”
Though being at home brings comfort, if it’s an emergency, Bell says you should always go to a clinic.
“Anything critical should not be seen in the home,” she says. “If you have an emergency and something awful happens, you don’t want me to come to your house and say ‘oh my gosh we need to get to a clinic.'”
So far, Bell says reception to her business by the other vet practices in the city has been positive.
“I’m working on building good relationships with all of them,” she says. “Most of the clinics will do a house call if requested, but it’s a lot harder to fit into a regular practice because they have lost a vet and tech for a chunk of time when they can do four or five appointments in a clinic.”
There are many reasons people sometimes can’t get their pet to a clinic. Whether it’s that they don’t own a vehicle or their animal is unable to travel. Bell says her practice is not about competition and taking away business from others, but making veterinary care more accessible to people and their pets.
“I basically want to make it so that more people in general are being seen … I want to bring new people out who are thinking ‘I really want to get my cat to the vet but every time I put them in the carrier they go crazy,'” she says. “If we do discover they need something done in the clinic, at least they will have all these other things done at home and we can figure out a plan to get their pet to clinic for whatever needs to be done there.”
Business at Seaside has been pretty steady since launch with all 5 star reviews and praising comments on the company Facebook page. Bell is finally doing what she is passionate about the way she wants to.
“I really do think that when people love doing what they’re doing, that comes off. I really love what I’m doing now. I feel excited about the appointments. I’m happy to talk to people,” she says.
“I really want to make them happy, so hearing something positive about it is incredibly gratifying. I’m doing the right thing for these people and myself. It really means a lot of hear those things.”