Coming this spring, VetCheck, a company with multiple emergency vets in the area surrounding Bloomington is opening a new pet urgent care center. While the vet will not be available 24 hours, it will offer expanded hours compared to existing Bloomington vets. This urgent care center will fill the gap created due to the lack of emergency vets in Bloomington for decades. In a town with as many pets and pet owners as Bloomington, you would think there would be an easily accessible emergency vet. In reality, the nearest emergency clinic is around an hour away. This isn’t just a problem for Bloomington residents; surrounding areas like Bedford, Nashville, and Columbus will also benefit from closer proximity to an urgent vet.

Many of the students at south agreed that this new emergency vet will be very helpful. Senior Phoebe Hyun “had to drive over an hour in the middle of the night because of [her] dog’s health scare”. She agreed a “closer emergency vet would have gotten rid of much of the stress caused by the long drive.” Similarly, Senior Emma Shaw agreed that the lack of emergency vets in Bloomington caused “unnecessary stress during situations that are already very stressful”. The new emergency vet will be valuable to the Bloomington community not just because of its life-saving potential, but also because of the reduced stress on pet owners.