Making Pet Stops : Canoga Park Veterinarian Takes His Services on the Road

It’s a veterinary practice born of necessity, a new twist on a fading tradition and a godsend for pet owners with large dogs and small cars. It’s a mobile animal hospital that makes house calls.

Dr. Joseph F. Giardina of Canoga Park started the service late in 1987. He said he had little choice.

The building where he had hung his shingle for 16 years was about to be sold, an alternative site had fallen through and he had only about six weeks to relocate his Pet Vet Animal Hospital.

Giardina remembered seeing a mobile home specially outfitted as an animal hospital at a veterinary conference. He phoned the manufacturer, Born Free, in Humboldt, Iowa, and arranged to pick up the only unit available--in South Dakota. He drove it back and started working the streets.

23-Foot Clinic

Traversing the San Fernando Valley in his $50,000, 23-foot clinic, Giardina has tended wounds, treated rashes and administered vaccinations. He has pumped the stomach of a Scottish terrier that ate poisonous snail bait, removed a ball lodged in the throat of a German shepherd and eased an aging dog’s painful arthritis with injections.

The house calls, which cost $35, $10 more than an office visit, were so popular, particularly with the elderly and those with multiple pets, that Giardina continued the practice after opening a new hospital last year on Sherman Way in Canoga Park.

The Southern California Veterinary Medical Assn., a professional organization for animal doctors, reports that 11 of its 750 members in Los Angeles County, six of them in the Valley, devote their entire practices to house calls. But most go door-to-door in cars or vans that lack the equipment of Giardina’s unit.

Although home visits by veterinarians have become more frequent in recent years, a response to increasing consumer demands for convenience and personalized service, mobile clinics equipped for surgical procedures are rare in urban areas where animal hospitals abound.

“I don’t know of a veterinarian that wouldn’t make a house call if someone has been a longtime client,” said Gary Hill, executive officer of the Board of Examiners in Veterinary Medicine, which licenses animal doctors in California. “It’s not new or unique.”

But mobile clinics, he said, are typically found in sparsely populated rural communities where it is difficult for resident veterinarians to earn a living. “To have a mobile unit operating in a city like Los Angeles is kind of unusual,” Hill said.

Giardina spends three afternoons a week in his medical mobile home. One recent afternoon, he drove 50 miles, made six house calls and treated seven pets. Most required only vaccinations or routine examinations. But the hospital is equipped for highly technical operations.

It has a gas anesthesia machine, diagnostic equipment, a laboratory, an examination and surgical table and surgical lights.

There is a pharmacy, refrigerator, cages for transporting animals, hot and cold running water, heat and air conditioning.

“The only thing we can’t do in this unit are X-rays,” Giardina said. So when he was called upon recently to help a German shepherd puppy with a broken jaw, he had to take the dog to his pet hospital for treatment. He returned the dog to its owner, Denise Dwyer, the next week.

“Please, no hard food for one month,” Giardina instructed as his assistant, Jerry Ellinghausen, handed Dwyer the puppy earlier this month.

‘It’s a Blessing’

For Dolores Freedy of Sherman Oaks, who has taken her pets to “Dr. G” for 12 years, the mobile service is more than just a convenience. “It’s a blessing,” she said. “I have back trouble, and it’s difficult for me to handle my dogs and take them in.”

Margot Golding of Granada Hills has a different problem. Her three German shepherds won’t fit in her Camaro.

“This is a wonderful thing,” Golding gushed as Ellinghausen struggled to lift 69-pound Rambo onto a small examining table in the mobile unit. “Just fantastic.”

By the time that Giardina pulled away from Golding’s home 20 minutes later, Rambo had received medication for a stomach ailment and his vaccination.

The next patient that afternoon was Saint, a Doberman that injured his foot while romping in the back yard. “I worry about him,” owner Joyce Perlstein of Lake Encino told the doctor. “He’s 8 1/2 and I want him around a long time.”

Giardina assured Perlstein that Saint’s wound was healing properly, and she heaped praise upon the traveling veterinarian.

“The only thing,” she joked, “is he likes animals more than people.”