Summary:   

Currently there are only 3 cities that offer 24/7 vet care - Kingston, Ottawa, and Peterborough - which are all over an hour away.  Belleville does not have 24/7 vet care. 

This petition will strongly encourage all vets within Hastings and Lennox & Addington Counties, to create an Association, like one that exists in Sudbury, to provide:

- 24 hour, 7 day/week, 365 days/year vet care through an on-call rotational schedule

- provide care at the regular costs associated with each clinic; not emergency clinic fees

- provide local, timely emergency care for rural pets

If you'd like more information, please continue reading.  Otherwise, please be a voice for your pets.  Please sign this petition. 

To contact me, please email jacquiet77@yahoo.ca 

Full Petition:

Like us, animals don't wait to get sick or injured during business hours.  The rural areas within Hastings, Centre Hastings, and Lennox & Addington are already home to some fantastic vets in long-established clinics.  Despite this, there has been a noticeable gap in around-the-clock availability - no clinics are currently providing 24-hour veterinary assistance and specialized services to pet owners.  Ask most pet owners and they will agree that this is a necessary service in the community. 

Any long-time pet owners naturally want the best quality of life for their animals, and there has always been a point in the lives of each of our pets in which they have needed special treatments, or possibly even urgent or critical veterinary care.  In these situations, pet owners have had to make a difficult decision - either wait until their local clinic is open (which could be days), or drive to whoever is open to treat them, in the hopes that they make it there in time. 

This is the choice I made when my 6 year old Chihuahua, Lola, collapsed in my hands at 2:30 am.  Needless to say, she didn't survive the hour-plus drive to Kingston.  I promised her that I would petition to have services put in place so that others would have a better chance at surviving than she did.  

As Lola's death demonstrates, emergencies have a way of happening after hours or on weekends, or both.  The closest emergency vet is over an hour away and this extended travel time risks the outcome of our pets health - sometimes what is quite literally a life or death situation.  In most cases, the closest clinic open 24 hours is 45-60 minutes, or more, away. The feeling of isolation, desperation, and powerlessness is overwhelming - knowing that there is no one local with their doors open to help your unwell or injured pet. 

Pets are increasingly being considered family members, children even, and worthy of the best and most prompt care. Humans have ER's and ambulances with trained personnel, ready to provide medical and life-saving care to those in need. Our pets have to wait an hour, with the risk that they might not last that long without care.  

Examples of common pet emergencies requiring IMMEDIATE medical attention, are as follows:

- wounds involving head, ears, eyes, nose, throat;

- penetrating injuries, especially to chest, abdomen, groin;

- bleeding from rectum, blood in urine;

- ingestion of something poisonous;

- fractured bones;

- unconsciousness;

- trauma - traffic accidents, bites, falls, gunshot wounds;

- GDV - Gastric Dilation Volvulus (twisted intestines);

- whelping or kittening emergencies;

- foreign object in throat;

- neurological problems;

- allergic reactions;

- heatstroke;

- fever;

- infection;

- bloated, distended abdomen;

- burns, scalds;

- heart failure, heart attack, cardiac arrest (what Lola died from).

These emergencies require immediate attention and to put things into perspective, as far as how limited emergency care is, consider this area:  North Bay to Ottawa (358.5 km), Ottawa to Kingston (195.5 km), Kingston to Peterborough (189.1 km), Peterborough to North Bay (320.4 km). In that vast area, there are only 24-hour emergency veterinary clinics in Ottawa, Kingston, and Peterborough.  

To further put things into perspective, consider the following distances that pet owners living in towns within that area have to drive for medical care:

Tweed to Kingston = 89.9 km - 1 hour 5 minutes

Tweed to Peterborough = 98.2 km - 1 hour 14 minutes

Tweed to Ottawa = 191.6 km - 2 hours 7 minutes

Denbigh to Kingston = 149.1 km - 1 hour 46 minutes

Denbigh to Peterborough = 162.7 km - 1 hour 58 minutes

Denbigh to Ottawa = 162.3 km - 1 hour 44 minutes

Northbrook to Kingston = 96.5 km - 1 hour 11 minutes

Northbrook to Peterborough = 122 km - 1 hour 30 minutes

Northbrook to Ottawa = 172.1 km - 1 hour 55 minutes

And none of these distances, of course, include traffic, trains, or construction delays.

The common pet emergencies listed above require more prompt and IMMEDIATE attention than an hour. Our pets deserve better than that.  While researching strategies to address this gap, I discovered the Sudbury Veterinary Association (SVA).  The veterinarians belonging to the association work together to ensure that there is ALWAYS someone available to help pets when needed through a shared on-call rotation model.   

The on-call duties and costs of after-hours telephone answering are shared by the clinics in the SVA.  Since the clinics share the on-call rotation, the location of the emergency hospital varies depending on who is providing services on any given day.  This is accommodated by a central paging service which answers the after hours line and forwards the info to the clinic on-call that day. The clinic will them get in touch with the owner. 

Because of the number of clinics involved, any one member clinic covers approximately one weeknight every 2 weeks and 4-5 weekends per year. They have agreements with respect to sharing the holidays and long weekends - whichever clinic is on-call for Christmas gets the benefit of choosing their weekends for the following year, and are exempt from any holidays for that full year. 

They also have by-laws in place to ensure that patients remain with their primary care providers and do not "clinic hop" after an emergency visit. They do not allow file transfers from emergency patients for at least 6 months following the emergency visits.  All charts are sent to the primary care provider right away, and if overnight care is required, the offer is always made to transfer the case back to the regular clinic during regular office hours, although this rarely happens in the name of patient comfort and safety. 

They also have regular meetings to discuss issues or problems as they arise, and all decisions are made by majority vote through a closed ballot system. New member practices may be added provided they have been nominated by an existing practice and are voted in by a majority.  There are several rules by which each practice must abide and if these rules are consistently broken, the member may be removed from the on-call rotation (by majority vote) and in that case, will have to arrange alternate after-hours coverage for their patients.  Without these rules, that are strictly adhered to, the association would surely fail.  

Through the creation and implementation of the SVA, veterinary care is accessible and available to rural pet owners 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  This eliminates the long delay in travel to get to already established 24-hour emergency veterinary care.  We all know and understand that rural pets are just as deserving of accessible medical care as their urban counterparts.  The SVA also doesn't charge owners typical emergency fees that regular 24-hour vet clinics do.  The cost of getting your pet medical attention can be expected to remain reasonable regardless of what time of day it is. 

Creating a similar association of local veterinarians is as feasible as it is needed.  The SVA has been operating for over 7 years now so it has proven that a model like theirs can be successful and is possible. 

Rural pets deserve accessible and reliable veterinary care too.  Rural pets deserve to get the help they need without throwing their owners into extreme debt.  Rural pets deserve to be treated as soon as possible as opposed to clinging to life, or in immense pain for an hour or more.  This on-call rotation model solves this issue and provides a wonderful opportunity for rural vet clinics to expand their services.  

We, the undersigned, implore the veterinary clinics within the Counties of Hastings and Lennox & Addington to join together to create and implement this highly successful and desperately needed on-call rotation model.