VO Vets offers a variety of services, including pet wellness, pet vaccinations, spaying and neutering, pet teeth cleaning, parasite prevention, exotic pet care, pet surgery and microchipping. Community Impact sat down with two VO Vets veterinarians, Dr. Eric Collins and Dr. Shannon Vicario, to talk about their specialties and how VO Vets brings phenomenal pet care to the Fort Worth and Trophy Club communities.
What drew you to veterinary medicine?
Dr. Collins: My family are huge animal lovers. First and foremost, that’s definitely what drew me into the field. Growing up, I actually wanted to go to pharmacy school for a long time, because I really like pharmacology and all those types of things. Whenever I was going through that process, I realized that there was just something missing for me. As I thought about it a little bit more, I recognized that there’s not a day that I don’t want to work with animals.
Dr. Vicario: I’ve loved animals since I was an infant, but I didn’t really know that I wanted to go to vet school. At school, I had to go do a job shadow. So I had to pick somewhere, and I picked the vet. I showed up, and they were doing surgery on an iguana, and I thought ‘This is such a cool surgery.’ Once I did that, there was no question in my mind that that’s what I would want to do for the rest of my life. I can’t really picture myself doing anything else.
What areas do you specialize in?
Dr. Collins: As a second year, I’m definitely still trying to figure out where my big interests lie. I really like ultrasounds. That’s something that I’ve done additional training on. That and internal medicine, I feel kind of coincide with each other. Those kinds of difficult cases that it’s not a black-and-white type of a thing, and it requires you to do complex thinking. Those are the kind of cases that I’ve really enjoyed being able to do.
Dr. Vicario: I’m a general practice doctor, but we definitely have our own interests. I really like dentistry. I really like surgery. I do internal medicine. The exotic pets are kind of fun because they keep me on my toes. There’s always something coming in the door where I have to learn something myself to make sure that I can help them.
What is classified as an exotic animal at VO Vets?
Dr. Vicario: Pretty much if it’s not a dog or cat, a lot of people aren’t going to be comfortable seeing that. This includes rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, turtles, snakes, birds and hamsters. I’ve even had someone bring me a kangaroo. A lot of the other smaller pets, I can apply a lot of the medications that we have to a lot of those. When you go to vet school, they don’t really teach you a lot about the other species. I really had to seek out that experience. If there’s something that I don’t know, then I’m happy to refer them to a specialist.
How does VO Vets provide phenomenal pet care?
Dr. Collins: On top of that, we try to be the most complete and comprehensive clinic possible. The fact that we’re open till 7 o’clock is definitely later than the majority of clinics in the area. We get a lot of people that get off work and something’s happened, and they don’t know whether it’s a true emergency that they need to go to an ER for, or if it’s something that we can deal with ourselves. We have that ability here to be able to see walk-ins and get to see things a little bit sooner.
Dr. Vicario: We are open every single day. A lot of general practice clinics are not open for that. We do a lot of wellness, but we also do urgent care. During the week, there’s typically more than one of us here. We often will work on cases where we have wellness plans or preventative care plans. We have a really well-stocked pharmacy. We have X-ray, blood work and ultrasound in-house. We have the ability to get a radiology consultation even within an hour. We can write blood work within 20 minutes. We can kind of handle a lot of things in a pretty quick manner.
To start getting top care for your pet at VO Vets, stop by the office, call 682-350-8890 or visit the website to schedule an appointment.
The above story was produced by Community Impact’s Senior Multi Platform Journalist Sierra Rozen with information solely provided by the local business as part of its “sponsored content” purchase through our advertising team.
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