Ogeechee Veterinarian Associates moves to new location

Growing up, if she wasn’t at school or ball practice or riding a horse, Dr. Taylor Pritchard Franke was at her dad’s veterinary office in Louisville or out with him caring for ill or injured animals.

“I don’t know how little I was when I started going on farm calls with him,” she said.

When she was just five-years-old she knew enough that while her dad, Chip Pritchard, examined an injury on a local farmer’s bull, she was able to call out its fate.

“I told the farmer I would be eating him at McDonalds next week,” she said. “Growing up being a veterinarian’s child, there is a different appreciation for things."

The smell of the jelly used as a lubricant for palpating calves reminds her of her father. And the distinctive medicinal odor mixed with the animal musk of nearby dog runs remind her of that vet clinic where she spent so much time.

In early March, she watched as that old building just off the Louisville bypass, which had served Louisville area pet owners and farmers for nearly 70 years, was torn down.

“Some people didn’t like that smell, but it was nostalgic to me,” she said.

Ogeechee Veterinary Associates, which has relocated to 1266 Shannon Boulevard in Louisville, will hold an open house at its new location on Saturday, April 27, from noon until 2 p.m. The event, which is free to the public, will include tours, free food and drinks, games, a raffle and giveaways.

Dr. Julian Veatch built the first veterinary practice at that original location in 1955. Pritchard started working for Veatch in 1984 and bought the practice from him in 1990.

Pritchard said he had originally thought about going to medical school, but while studying biology and zoology in undergrad, he started helping some friends with their horses, pigs and cows and then decided he would rather go to veterinary school.

“We used to have a lot more emergencies back then,” Pritchard said. “There were more dairies and a lot more opportunities for large animal emergency work.”

For more than 20 years Pritchard worked mostly as a one-man operation, sometimes 80 to 100 hours a week, working both in the office and doing farm calls to serve the community.

“For a long time I felt like I had to be available all the time. I hardly ever took any time off,” he said. “I thought, who else are they going to call.”

As emergency veterinarian offices opened in later years in nearby Augusta, he said he began backing away from some of the emergency work, until his daughter graduated from vet school in 2018 and joined the family business. As veterinarians in surrounding counties canceled their weekend hours and emergency services over the last couple of years, Ogeechee kept theirs.

In addition to their daily hours, open from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Thursdays, Pritchard and Franke are also available the first and third Saturdays of each month from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. They are also available for emergencies, but ask that if small animal calls arise Monday through Fridays from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. or weekends between 3 p.m. and 7 a.m. to call one of six other emergency vets they have listed.

The move to the new location came with double the square footage they had at their former clinic.

The new office features more large kennels, a grooming room, an isolation area, a separate cat room outside of the general population kennels, two private exam rooms, a separate Xray room with new equipment, a fenced in outdoor area and more than twice the number of outdoor dog runs as they had before.

New equipment includes a heated surgery table, an ophthalmoscope and two IDEXX systems, one for Xrays and another or taking blood samples.

“Now we can run complete blood counts that look at the red and white blood cells and platelet counts as well as the chemistries,” Franke said. “We’re taking samples that look an array of things like the liver, kidney, glucose, electrolytes, cholesterol lipase... basically at the main organ functions.”

With this machine they get results in 8 minutes that before took 36 hours.

“Most of the time you can treat things symptomatically, but last week I saw a dog for lethargy,” Franke said. “We pulled the blood work. After a week the white count jumped and we changed his treatment as well as our theory as to what was going on.”

With the IDEXX comes free consultations with that company’s clinical pathologists, oncologists and dermatologists. With the IDEXX Xray machine comes free consultations with a board of radiologists.

“If a dog has ingested something and we need to know if it needs surgery to have a foreign body removed, we can send them those Xrays,” Franke said. “If there is something going on with the heart or the lungs we can send that off for review.”

For small animals, the clinic provide services that include wellness and sick visits, yearly vaccinations, express anal glands, nail trims, grooming and bathing, microchipping, boarding, in-house blood work, heart worm treatments, end-of-life planning and care, cremations, in-hospital care, fracture repair, digital radiography, pregnancy testing by blood, utlrasound or Xray, abdominal ultrasound, soft tissue surgeries, spay, neuter, c-section deliveries, ear trims, biopsy, mass removal, cystotomy, enterotomy, bone surgeries, tail docking, declawing, bone pinning, limb amputation and dental cleanings.

For large animals, at the clinic or at the farm, Ogeechee Veterinary Associates offers wellness and sick visits, colic workups, resolving choked horses, c-sections for sheep, goats and cows, laceration repairs, LDA/RDAs in cattle, obstetrical procedures (delivering babies and replacing uterine prolapses), assessing and treating down animals, yearly vaccines, Coggins testing, dental floating, sheath cleaning, in-house blood testing, pregnancy testing through ultrasound, rectal or blood, gelding/castration, herd management protocol help, vaccine protocols, deworming, lump/mass removals and dehorning for cattle and goats.

Pritchard said he still enjoys the job, serving people, their livestock and animal companions.

“I like the variety, going out to different farms and coming back and the variety of surgeries,” he said. “They say you can be a vet without being an animal lover, but I don’t know if that’s true. In this we’re doing something good. We have literally saved countless lives and brought joy into the owners’ lives from the good we’ve done. It’s rewarding when you see things like that.”

Franke said she likes the medicine part of the job and being able to give people answers to what’s wrong with their pets.

While they primarily see horses, cattle, dogs and cats, Ogeechee Veterinarian Associates also works with alpacas, sheep, goats and pigs.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Ogeechee Veterinarian Associates moves to new location