Whidbey pet owners face long drives for emergency care

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, June 30, 2026

When Ann Merriman’s dog suffered a stroke last fall, the Langley resident spent three days driving to veterinary clinics in Mount Vernon and Tacoma before getting a diagnosis.

Her experience reflects a challenge many Whidbey Island pet owners face: there is no 24-hour emergency veterinary clinic on the island.

Merriman recalled how her 3-and-a-half-year-old Bernese Mountain dog’s behavior shifted. She appeared lethargic, her eyes became fixed in a dilated stare and she refused to eat. The dog eventually was diagnosed with a stroke and has since recovered.

Yet Merriman said she worried about the time she felt went “wasted” trying to find proper medical care for her dog.

“At the time, it was absolutely terrifying,” Merriman recalled. “I was just really upset that I couldn’t get her seen.”

Many pet owners on Whidbey have stories like these, albeit not all of them with happy endings. Claudia Bridges recalled the drive to a 24-hour emergency clinic in Mount Vernon after her dog was injured in a fall. The dog died in her lap before they arrived. Diana Bedford found it “excruciating” driving to the same clinic with her cat when she found it “sneezing blood” one day nearly a decade ago, an experience and a loss she said she and her daughter haven’t forgotten.

Whidbey pet owners are frustrated with the lack of 24-hour emergency clinics on the island because a long drive — sometimes including a ferry — only postpones pets’ access to sometimes life-saving medical care. On Sunday, for example, the Pet Emergency Center in Mount Vernon had a six- to eight-hour wait, although severe cases are triaged.

Veterinarians say the lack of an emergency clinic on Whidbey isn’t due to a lack of demand. Rather, they say staffing shortages, economics and geography make such a facility difficult to sustain.

“Unfortunately, it’s a complicated thing,” said Lark Gustafson, a veterinarian with Penn Cove Veterinary Clinic.

Erica Syring, a veterinarian at Best Friend’s Veterinary Center in Oak Harbor, contributed to an effort to increase accessibility to emergency medical care for pets. Aware of the need for a “centrally located” 24-hour emergency clinic, Syring said she and her colleague, Eric Anderson, were part of a group of veterinarians from Island and other neighboring counties who formed the Pet Emergency Center at least 20 years ago.

Other than that, there are 24-hour pet emergency clinics farther north and south of Whidbey, including Bellingham, Lynnwood and Tacoma.

That is, they are located in “larger population centers” able to more easily financially support them, Gustafson explained.

Syring explained that adequately staffing an emergency clinic means hiring veterinarians and support staff, including receptionists and veterinary technicians, to work all hours, even overnight. Although pet ownership has “jumped significantly over the past three decades,” Forbes reported in January, demand on Whidbey may not be able to sustain a 24-hour emergency clinic.

Citing the Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Society, veterinarians Ana Kidder and Seirra Seay of Heritage Veterinary explained in an email that a population of at least 250,000 is needed to create a “sustainable caseload” for such clinics. Whidbey’s population is about 70,000.

A veterinarian shortage makes hiring for an emergency clinic difficult, Syring said.

Attending veterinary school is costly and becoming costlier, according to a study conducted by the American Veterinary Medical Association, or AVMA, leaving many students with significant debt afterwards. New doctor of veterinary medicine graduates with at least some student debt in 2025 owed $212,499 on average, up from $186,788 in 2022.

Further, Gustafson pointed out, veterinary schools are limited in number. There are only 36 accredited colleges of veterinary medicine in the United States and its territories as of March, according to the AVMA.

Washington State University is home to the state’s only accredited college of veterinary medicine. A total of 142 students comprise the current class of first-year veterinary students, according to its website, accepted from 2,504 total applicants.

Existing veterinarians are prone to burnout as well, given 80-hour work weeks aren’t unheard of in the industry. Veterinarians at Heritage Veterinary in Oak Harbor work the next morning regardless of how late they worked the night before, Kidder and Seay said.

Ultimately, “veterinarians are in very, very high demand and to find one that wants to stay up all night and do emergency work is even harder,” Syring said.

Some veterinary clinics on the island offer limited emergency services to patients, but expanding those services may put a strain on veterinarians.

Best Friend’s Veterinary Clinic is typically “fully booked when we walk in the door in the morning,” Syring said, limiting the number of emergencies they can take on. Dedicated emergency clinics play a “vital role in veterinary care,” Kidder and Seay pointed out, as they allow regular vet clinics to focus on providing “routine and less emergent care to many patients.”

Depending on its location, however, an emergency clinic may still necessitate long drives for some island residents, Gustafson said.

“We have many regional facilities, but families moving to Whidbey Island should recognize that living in this beautiful place comes with geographical obstacles,” Kidder and Seay added.

Pet owners on Whidbey can do a few things to mitigate the impacts of long drives during emergencies.

Knowing the most common symptoms of a serious medical emergency — like difficulty breathing, seizures, persistent vomiting and severe pain — can help owners get their pets to clinics earlier on, Kidder and Seay said. When in doubt, they recommend calling an emergency center ahead of time, especially on the South End, to determine if driving north or taking the ferry to get there is a better idea.