For years, Aroostook County pet owners have been forced to trek hours south to find emergency care for their animals.
The nearest emergency veterinary practice, Eastern Maine Emergency Veterinary Clinic, is in Holden, more than two and a half hours from most of central Aroostook and close to four hours from parts of the St. John Valley.
That puts a great financial burden on owners, who are strapped with travel costs on top of veterinary bills, and amplifies the suffering of animals, who are powerless but to wait hours for care. Some have died on the way.
Now there is a local option.
Anne and Mark Tareila described their recent launch of Aroostook Animal Emergency Services as “fulfilling a call from God.” The practice, which opened in February at 64 Main St. in Mars Hill, is now the northernmost after-hours veterinary clinic in the state, meeting a significant need in a rural region that has long faced a shortage of veterinarians.
“We wouldn’t have done this if we didn’t know that it was what we were supposed to do,” veterinarian Anne Tareila said.
The clinic is open from 4 p.m. to midnight Thursday, Friday and Sunday and from noon to midnight on Saturdays. Tareila is currently the only full-time veterinarian, in addition to two full-time and several part-time vet technicians, but she hopes to add staff in the future.
“Eventually, we’d like to be open all weekend, 24/7, and every evening so we can cover all the hours that the regular vets aren’t open,” she said.
Tareila has been a vet for more than 10 years, most of which she’s spent working at another clinic in Aroostook County.
She and her husband, Mark, who is the business manager of Aroostook Animal Emergency Services, are originally from Connecticut but moved to The County in 2016. They purchased the building — which was previously an office of Ascent Global Logistics — and began renovations about a year ago.
The clinic has four exam rooms, two surgery tables, an isolation room to treat pets with infectious diseases and the capacity to hospitalize animals.
“We will do just about anything we can,” Anne Tareila said. “There are certain surgeries that we are just not set up for, most orthopedic surgeries … but if a dog eats something that they shouldn’t and gets it stuck in their intestines, we can get it out. We can do things like lacerations, wounds, that sort of stuff. We had a dog come in [after] a dog fight the other day and we were able to get them taken care of.”
Tareila can treat injuries from porcupine quills, which concern many pet owners as temperatures warm. The practice also has an on-site pharmacy, can run diagnostics, conduct X-rays and ultrasounds and treat other conditions, such as nausea.
The facility is set up to treat most typical household pets.
“I will see just about anything,” Tareila said. “We had a sugar glider and a rat come in this last weekend.
“We’re not perfectly set up for exotics, but we do have some things we can do for them, depending on what’s going on. As far as large animals and farm animals, it’s just not a great location for that. People can’t bring their horse here.”
Aroostook Animal Emergency Services is the seventh emergency veterinary clinic in Maine, according to the Maine Veterinary Medical Association, most of which are clustered in the south. The facility in Holden is the only practice in Penobscot County. There are two in the Portland area and one each in Warren, Augusta and Lewiston.
Prior to opening her practice, Tareila picked up a shift with Eastern Maine Veterinary. Depending on the day, “a third to half of what they see comes from The County,” she said.
Because of the need, several of the five veterinary practices in Aroostook County offer on-call services for existing patients. The Tareilas hope their venture relieves that burden of emergency care.
“Vets have to commit to giving up weekend time,” Mark Tareila said. “Not every weekend, per se, but you know that it’s coming. Doesn’t matter if you’re at a birthday party or a church event or whatever you’re doing, you’re going to have to leave at some point. We wanted to try and conquer that problem.”
In its first month of operation, the clinic has seen, on average, one animal brought in per hour, between six to nine a day. The pet owners, Anne Tareila said, have been “very appreciative that we’re here.”
“We’re providing things across the board,” Mark Tareila said. “To know that that’s being offered and people are happy about it … that’s a very rewarding feeling.”