Hard To Find An Emergency Vet on Sunday Evening in Sacramento

Still peeved about last night. Friends Gabe and Eleanor went to Los Angeles again this last weekend, and again I was tapped to dogsit for their pets, Blue and Molly. They live in the general neighborhood of Florin and Highway 99 in South Sacramento.

On Sunday evening, we had just returned from a walk around the neighborhood. I let the dogs out into the back yard. The dogs ran to the north fence to bark at people on the other side - people transiting the pedestrian walkway that crosses over Highway 99, just like they've done a million times before. Except, this time, Blue returned with a limp. A pad on her right front foot had been sliced off entirely and the webbing between her little toe and the rest of the foot had been severed. And blood. Lots and lots of blood!

(Our working theory is that there was glass embedded somewhere in the back yard. A wannabe burglar had shattered a bedroom window just last month before being scared off by the alarm. Despite Gabe's cleanup, it's conceivable some glass remained undetected in the yard, and that's what Blue hit. We still haven't found the hazard.)

I called Gabe in LA. He suggested going to VCA Mueller Hospital, near Meadowview and Freeport. Several miles away. Quite a distance I thought, given the amount of bleeding occurring, but no places closer were bound to open on a Sunday evening, so I went.

Most VCA veterinary hospitals advertise that they are open 24 hours. This may be technically true, but it doesn't mean that they can accommodate you. I waited 1.5 hours for the emergency vet at VCA Mueller, only to learn that the vet had gone into surgery and wouldn't be available for 2 or 3 hours.

I had to find another vet. But you couldn't rely on the advertising. If 15 or 20 vets are advertising 24/7 services, how do you find the 1 or 2 places that are actually open? I had a bleeding dog. I didn't have time to call all the hospitals. The vet staff at Mueller said they'd help, but there was a shift change - they got distracted and stopped helping. An animal can bleed to death in the meantime. I threw up my hands and chose to go UC Davis, far from South Sacramento. The veterinary school there was staffed with vet students. More importantly, because they were located in a public university, I could count on the UC Davis vet hospital actually being open on a Sunday evening, unlike the privately-held VCA hospitals.

Later, I learned there there are apparently a few Sacramento-area vets open on a Sunday evening: maybe ones in Roseville, Rancho Cardova, and Folsom, on the far northern or eastern fringes of the Sacramento metropolitan area, where disposable incomes are higher and life is easier. We were in South Sacramento, where there was just one overworked vet in hours-long surgery, and thus unavailable to anyone. (And of course that applies to Elk Grove, Sacramento, and North Sacramento too. Close to a million people, and just one overworked vet.)

Finally, about 9 p.m., 3 hours after the bloodletting had started, Blue finally started getting medical care. She was released about 10:30 p.m., with a bandaged leg, some pain meds, and a Cone of Shame.