24-hour emergency pet service needed

This past Sunday evening our large 150-pound Akita had to be put down unexpectedly. The evening started out fine. He ate his dinner, then went outside. A few hours later, he was thrashing about, foaming at the mouth, urinating and seemingly unconscious. We were freaking out and desperately searching for phone numbers of a 24-hour emergency service. I tried to comfort him while my wife called an animal emergency in located in Dover, which agreed to see him. We had to get him there, then they said we were not allowed in with him. So my wife called the animal ER in Salisbury; again, we had to get him there and we would not be allowed in. Seriously? Would Beebe admit a minor and not let at least one parent in to be with their child? We had masks, we were vaxed, and we have to drive 40 minutes to wait in a car? This wasn’t an ordinary visit; this is an emergency, with freaked-out parents.

Meantime, I tried to get our boy into our SUV, but I had to get him up first. This proved ridiculously difficult ... he was just too big for me. So I called a neighbor who came right away, but he was too big to move. By then, he had suffered another grand mal seizure, and now it looked like he was paralyzed on his left side.

Eventually, my wife got the names of two veterinarians who made house calls, but both said there was little they could do and that we needed to get to an ER. Nikko’s seizures seemed to subside a bit and we tried again to get him into the car, but now that he was paralyzed it was even harder to get him up. We tried dragging him, but to no avail. Everything seemed to be acting against us, then another seizure came and then another. Now all we wanted was to let him rest and maybe by the morning I could get him to our vet. That wasn’t meant to be, as he suffered yet another seizure. We called back one of the doctors who made house calls and asked if she would make the drive to our house and put him down. We felt terrible in asking her to drive so far so late at night, but we couldn’t let him suffer any more and begged her to come. She agreed to come, but it would take her 45 minutes. When she arrived, she explained to me that Nikko was having cluster seizures and that there really isn’t anything that can be done, and that it was his time.

The stress and anguish we went through that evening was beyond belief. One thing that rings true throughout this awful ordeal is the feeling of helplessness. The anguish of not knowing where to turn. The frustration that there isn’t any 24-hour emergency service in this area anymore. Not having a nearby ER made a seriously stressful situation that much worse. God forbid, if your dog was hit by a car and needed to be put down, you would have to drive 40 minutes in either direction to get help. With the increase in housing, more families with pets will be moving in, making a dire situation worse. If only there was a doctor in this immediate area who, when needed, would make an emergency house call, to at least assess situations and, if needed, to put an animal down. While I don’t know why we no longer have 24-hour emergency service, veterinarians here need to recognize there is a need and having to spend time and energy to try to find a doctor while panicking is certainly not in the best interest of our fur-babies. I implore all veterinarians in this area to try to rectify the lack of 24-hour care to provide, at the very least, house calls and euthanasia services around the clock. There are several very capable animal hospitals in the area, and if doctors would get together and rotate one to two days a week for round-the-clock care, that would be extremely appreciated by the community.