Pet Paramedic : Ambulance Gives Fido, Felix Human-Type First-Aid Care

The patient’s yowls turned to whimpers as the paramedics administered a sedative and began the delicate work of extracting his leg from the dishwasher. Two hours later, Mary Lipis’ mangled dishwasher door lay on the floor, and her somewhat less-mangled cat Chu Chu lay on a stretcher in an ambulance headed for the veterinary hospital. The cat, who had reached its paw into a crack in the dishwasher, was treated for his bruises and came back home to San Gabriel the next day.

“I don’t know what we would have done without him,” Lipis said, praising Dirk Van Voris, the animal health technician who had rescued the curious feline.

Van Voris owns D.J.’s Pet Taxi in Hacienda Heights, one of the few pet ambulance services in the country manned by trained paramedics. In 18 months of operation, he has offered medical assistance and tender care to dogs and cats overcome by flea spray, crazed by drugs, hit by cars, bitten by coyotes, poisoned by irate neighbors and debilitated by disease. The ambulance also picks up dead animals for burial.

The service is run much like the human variety, with 24-hour emergency calls answered anywhere in the Los Angeles area, as well as routine transportation to animal hospitals. The ambulance, which Van Voris designed for animals, is equipped with lifesaving equipment, and even has room for frantic owners who want to ride with their sick pets. The pet paramedics, like those emergency workers who treat humans, use portable phones to get detailed instructions from their patients’ doctors on how to proceed with emergency treatment.

Van Voris, 24, who received an animal health technician degree from Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, said he had always been interested in the emergency side of his profession. Several of his veterinarian friends told him there was a real need for such a service and encouraged him to go ahead with the project.

He designed the ambulance because he could find no prototypes, and once equipped, he touted his service at animal clinics citywide. Now, most of his business comes from veterinarian referrals.

Only recently, with some of the expensive equipment outlays taken care of, has the business started to be self-supporting, Van Voris said. He charges $25 round trip for non-emergency transportation. The base fee for a night emergency run is $45. Even with emergency medical care added, the bill rarely runs more than $65, he said.

And while he has only one ambulance and two assistants right now, he hopes to expand. His wife, Jolene, who is a horse trainer and helped get the fledgling business off the ground, assists when she has free time.

Betsy Palfreyman, a technician at Eagle Rock Emergency Pet Hospital, praised the ambulance service. “They’re very helpful, especially for our clients who can’t bring their pets in by themselves. And they do a good job doing the emergency procedures at the accident scene and getting the animals to us.”

Gladys Cartwright, a 76-year-old Glendale resident who no longer drives, said the service has been invaluable. Noel, her Yorkshire terrier, has a chronic medical problem and requires frequent clinic visits.

“Dirk has such a nice way about him. The first time he came out to get Noel, he arrived early so he could become acquainted with her,” she said. “Noel doesn’t usually take to strangers, but she even gave him her green toy.”

One of the most memorable cases, Van Voris recalls, was a cat that was running amok in a West Hollywood apartment.

“The owners called in a panic. The cat was freaking out, running all through the house. He had already scratched one of them. But we couldn’t catch him. We tried a snare pole, a blanket,” Van Voris said. “Finally, he was worn out and basically hanging on the wall in the kitchen when we netted him.”

Apparently, the cat had nosed its way into somebody’s stash of drugs. It was treated at a hospital, and the owners kept it in a carrier for several days just to make sure it didn’t have a flashback.

On another occasion, Van Voris rescued an elderly German shepherd who broke its hind and front legs in a fall down a Pacific Palisades hillside. “I rappelled down the hill, examined him, then called (by mobile phone) his veterinarian. We sedated the dog because he was in a lot of pain. Then we splinted his legs, and gently pulled him up on a stretcher.”

Van Voris says that his work is “a new adventure every day.” But he adds that there is anguish when he finds an animal too hurt to be helped, or one that dies during the emergency run. “But my thinking is that when that stops bothering you, it’s time to get out of the profession.”