Where do you go when your pet falls ill at night or on a weekend, when your general veterinarian’s office is closed? 

If you’re in South Santa Barbara County, there’s Advanced Veterinary Specialists (AVS) on Carrillo Street, which is open 24/7.  But that facility sometimes hits capacity and cannot accept new patients.

Or you can go north, to Orcutt’s PETS Hospital, the county’s only other pet emergency hospital that is open 24/7. 

Another option is to cross county lines and go south, to Ventura’s 24/7 Horizon Veterinary Specialists. 

Some people — such as South County resident Sarah McKittrick — try all three. 

In April, for her daughter Kate’s 16th birthday, McKittrick adopted a 10-week-old puppy from Thousand Oaks. The family named him Maverick. 

One week later, the morning of Thursday, April 9, Maverick didn’t eat his breakfast. McKittrick took him to Montecito Pet Hospital, where he was found to be thin, anemic and had fleas, according to his medical records.

But that night, “he just went downhill,” McKittrick said. He couldn’t keep food or water down. He began vomiting and having severe diarrhea. She rushed him to AVS.

The facility told the family they couldn’t take him in because they were “short on staff,” McKittrick said.

She drove to Ventura County, but Horizon was also at capacity, she said. “‘We’re getting all of your (veterinary care) runoff, and we can’t handle our own, and yours as well,’” she recalled the staff saying.

(An AVS representative did respond over email to questions about emergency veterinary care in the county, but they did not speak specifically about McKittrick and Maverick. Horizon did not respond to an emailed Noozhawk request for comment.) 

Over the next two days, McKittrick visited San Roque Pet Hospital twice, where Maverick was diagnosed with parvo, a highly contagious and sometimes fatal viral disease. He had received two parvo vaccine shots before he got sick; puppies typically receive their third between 14 and 16 weeks old.

She took him to Urgent Veterinary Care in Santa Barbara on Sunday after he continued to get worse. They recommended that, given his “extremely ill” condition, he be taken to a 24/7 emergency room immediately for intensive care, according to his medical records. 

Out of options down south, McKittrick drove Maverick to PETS in Orcutt, with a referral from Urgent Veterinary Care.

He was given a monoclonal antibody, a newer treatment that directly targets the virus and can improve outcomes in combination with supportive care, and stayed there overnight.

But there was no “big” improvement in his condition, his medical records show. And Monday morning, $6,800 and five days later, facing a critically sick pet that “just deteriorated,” McKittrick decided to euthanize Maverick rather than continue to see him suffer.

Before Maverick got sick, she had no idea that her nearest 24/7 veterinary hospital would be unable to treat her puppy when he fell ill during nighttime hours.

She didn’t know that the county’s veterinarians have been slammed with cases since the closure last year of VCA Care, the county’s third 24/7 hospital.

Her experience trying to find emergency vet care spurred her to launch Maverick’s List, which connects pet owners with emergency resources. She wants every veterinary office in and near Santa Barbara County to post and share it.

A ‘Genuine Veterinary Access Emergency Challenge’

Marly Cronin, AVS hospital director, said there is a “genuine emergency veterinary access challenge” in Santa Barbara County. 

Cronin said over email that AVS is hiring for several roles, and directed Noozhawk to avs4pets.com. 

AVS is experiencing “high demand, causing longer wait times and possible diversion of non-urgent cases” because of the nearby hospital closure, says a note on the website. 

“There are a limited number of veterinary hospitals providing emergency care in the region, and since the loss of another 24/7 hospital in Santa Barbara County, fewer hospitals are now available to meet the area’s veterinary needs, especially after hours and overnight,” Cronin told Noozhawk.

“AVS remains open 24/7 and works to safely accommodate as many emergency patients as possible. There are occasional periods when we reach clinical capacity and need to direct some patients to another facility.”  

Dr. Addie Crawford, who owns Urgent Veterinary Care in Santa Barbara, said she has also noticed a “significant demand for urgent and emergency veterinary care” since VCA Care closed.

The urgent care on De La Vina Street can treat 90% of patients who come through the doors. It offers extended hours into the night and on weekends — seven days a week, noon to 8 p.m. — to help take some burden off of emergency hospitals.

But when the county’s 24/7 emergency hospitals are full, “there are very few alternatives for a critically ill animal in our area,” she said.

Because parvo is extremely contagious, Maverick needed a dedicated infectious-disease isolation ward, which Urgent Veterinary Care does not have, Crawford said.

Some pets with parvo can be treated with fluids with daily visits to a general practitioner or an urgent care vet, she said — like Maverick was when he first got sick. 

But once a puppy is “significantly dehydrated, regurgitating, not eating, having low white blood cells, low blood sugar” — like Maverick on April 12 — they need immediate hospitalization and overnight care with continuous monitoring, Crawford said. 

With parvo, “we’re trying to keep the patient hydrated, control vomiting, correct electrolyte and blood-sugar abnormalities, provide nutrition, and prevent or treat secondary bacterial infections while the puppy’s immune system fights the virus,” she said.

The night Maverick came to Urgent Veterinary Care, both Horizon and AVS were not accepting any new patients, according to his medical records.

In Orcutt, Patients Come from Near and Far

There are sometimes cases only a 24/7 emergency veterinary hospital can treat. 

And for Santa Barbara County residents, oftentimes the PETS Hospital on Bradley Road in Orcutt is the only place to go. 

PETS is in high demand because of its setup and ability to treat difficult emergency cases.

It’s “basically like a human ER combined with a surgery center combined with an outpatient clinic combined with a critical care ICU,” Medical Director Dr. Deanna Brown told Noozhawk. 

Among the long list of PETS’ other million-dollar technology is a state-of-the-art blood lab, which allows the facility to test and see results quickly.

Like Urgent Veterinary Care, PETS has seen a “huge uptick” in patients since VCA Care closed last year, according to hospital administrator Michelle Wright. 

Between January and August of 2025, PETS saw roughly 3,900 patients. During that same time period in 2026, they’re at 4,700.

Brown said her staff has been treating patients as far south as Los Angeles County and as far north as Morro Bay.

PETS doesn’t turn away patients, but staff do warn that the wait can stretch several hours as more emergent cases jump the line. Like most 24/7 human emergency rooms, cases are seen on a triage basis.

“We never say, ‘We can’t see anything…’ but we do warn people, ‘Hey, we’re highly impacted, and you may be looking at a several-hour wait, if not longer,’” Brown said. 

“Even though your dog has a sore toe and an infection from a fox tail, that is absolutely serious and worthy of being seen. As a pet parent, I sympathize. Unfortunately, that patient that was hit by a car… or bitten by a snake, is going to be seen ahead of you.” 

At any given time, there are two pet patients in $80,000-a-piece oxygen cases, one patient in an isolation ward, another in surgery, four in the outpatient kennels and a handful or more in the roughly dozen inpatient kennels. 

Some patients are on anywhere from five to eight types of medications and IVs all at once; occasionally one pet will be on a ventilator, which requires their own nurse sitting next to them at all times. 

A Growing List

McKittrick isn’t alone in having to travel far to access emergency veterinary care. The comments on her social media posts are filled with Santa Barbara pet owners who have similar stories.

There are now 45 veterinary hospitals, general practitioners and mobile veterinarians that operate along the Central Coast and Southern California on Maverick’s List. As of early September, it had been downloaded nearly 2,000 times.

“You don’t notice how limited your resources actually are when you’re in such desperate need of them,” said Kate, McKittrick’s daughter. “I think Maverick’s List… helps them. It gives them all the details that they need.”

One on the list is Wilder Animal Hospital, a general veterinary practice in the Goleta Valley that is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. 

Wilder is locally owned by Dr. Hilary Quinn, who asked to be put on the list after she spotted McKittrick’s social media posts.

She has also seen a recent uptick in patients needing care — not just since VCA Care closed last year, but since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. 

During the pandemic, it “seemed like all of a sudden the demand for veterinary services skyrocketed,” she said. 

She attributed this to, among other reasons, people being more attentive to their pets now that they worked from home. 

“To have this loss of emergency services in our area has been… it’s just the straw in the camel’s back,” she said. 

Wilder can treat the vast majority of patients who come through the doors. It is also equipped for surgeries, but oftentimes patients who undergo surgery need to be transferred to a 24/7 hospital for cardiac monitoring and around-the-clock post-surgical care.  

Her staff spends a decent chunk of time calling hospitals, asking, “‘Are you fitting anybody in today?’” Quinn said.

“These are all cases that need to be seen, but we might spend 45 minutes or an hour talking to five or six emergency hospitals that are outside of Santa Barbara, just so I can point someone in the right direction and get their animal care.” 

There is some relief for Santa Barbara’s emergency veterinary access challenge on the horizon, Quinn believes. 

She told Noozhawk there are veterinarians in the area who want to open up a second practice, including herself.

She couldn’t share specifics, but said there are also two or three pet hospitals she believes may open in the coming years.

That would be in addition to Bonnie Mara Animal Hospital, which opened last week in the Goleta Valley. Bonnie Mara is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

“I think everyone in the community, every veterinarian (to) general practitioner, to Dr. Crawford at Urgent Care and everybody at AVS — we all want more services in the area,” she said. 

Editor’s Note: This article is Part 1 of a series exploring veterinary care emergency access in Santa Barbara County. Check back with Noozhawk on Sept. 15 to read Part 2.