A new emergency vet service is opening in Rochester area

Sara Guymon, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.
·5 min read

May 23—STEWARTVILLE — A new emergency veterinarian service is slated to open in the area this year.

Allied Emergency Veterinarian Services — with locations in Eau Claire, Brooklyn Park and Minneapolis — has plans to expand into Rochester and Eden Prairie in the next few months. Until the company can build a new building in Rochester, it will operate out of the Stewartville Animal Clinic in Stewartville after their normal hours. They anticipate this starting in the summer of 2024.

"We were actually a part of that old service in the past and then it was sold to corporate," said Kara Nelsen, the medical director for Allied Emergency Veterinarian Services. "I think things changed and services changed at that point. We still know a lot of people in the community and when we opened our first clinic in Eau Claire, that was just the start of Allied. So knowing people in the area, we've been just having a pulse on what's happening in the state of Minnesota. We've had a lot of people reach out to us asking us to bring a consistent emergency service back."

Since opening in Eau Claire, Nelsen has seen clients from Rochester and southeastern Minnesota. In her experience, people don't want to drive to the Twin Cities and deal with the busy metro. She hopes Allied can provide the area with consistent and reliable care to pet owners, so they won't have to make the trip again.

In addition to benefiting the local pet owners, Allied Emergency Veterinary Services hopes to provide local vets with some relief.

"We appreciate our daytime bed partners and what they do and that they need time off," said Nelsen. "We want to be open to help when they're closed."

No one can predict when an emergency will happen, so it's crucial to have care open 24 hours. Allied plans to be open for emergency services the hours regular vets aren't typically available — around 5 or 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. on the week days and 24 hours on the weekends and holidays.

"What we love is being able to provide services when everybody else is closed and that includes holidays," Nelsen said.

Allied will have temporary residency in Stewartville until they are able to build their own veterinary clinic. They want to add something to the community and not take away something from other clinics and services. They hope to meet with the local clinics in town and figure out how they can help benefit this community.

Pet owners in Rochester have previously told the Post Bulletin that they are concerned about the state of emergency veterinary services in the city. BluePearl Pet Hospital, which provides after-hours emergency care in Rochester, is closed on Wednesdays. On the weekends it is open from 5 p.m. Friday to 8 p.m. Saturday and on Sunday it is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The pet hospital also has hours on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Still, pet owners feel more options are needed for care.

"Honestly, it's my worst nightmare," Sarah Quincey, owner of Cats Meow Cat Sitting, told the Post Bulletin in September . "If it's not Monday through Friday from 8 to 5 all day, you're kind of out of luck."

Nelsen said Allied hopes to open in the "early summer."

"We don't have a specific date yet. We've heard from other clinics in the community that wanted us here," she said. "Those connections are clinics saying 'please come and offer these services.' So we're hoping to have a town hall almost for the community vets to really see what they need from us as a great partner to their clinics when they're not open."

The veterinarians are trained in any animal big or small, however, they focus on household pets. Most of the animals they see are companion pets, but hamsters, cows and more are not off the table.

"In emergency (care), you have to know a little bit about everything," Nelsen said. "Our doctors, they're treating endocrine diseases like diabetes, cancer dogs that are diabetic. They're treating trauma cases. Not every trauma case looks the same. They're performing surgery on animals that have eaten a foreign object and have an obstruction. They're doing surgery and C-sections on animals who have tumors in their belly. So I think what makes ER fulfilling is being able to help people in a very critical time of need."

Because no two cases are the same, the solution is never the same either. Nelsen said it is fulfilling to help someone who needs it right in that moment. There are no appointments, just walk-ins.

For Nelsen and her team who had been a part of the Rochester veterinarian circle before leaving, this is a huge opportunity to give back to a community they know and care for.

"We're locally owned," said Nelsen. "We're owned by our team, not somebody else in another state or a corporation or anything like that. Knowing that we're local and this is a clinic from the people in this community, and we're serving a need that the community has asked for, I feel like that's probably the biggest thing."

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Editor's note: This story has been updated to note that Allied Emergency Veterinarian Service will be working with Stewartville Animal Clinic. Nelsen said she misspoke when she named a different city.