When the Nearest Emergency Vet Is 90 Minutes Away, What Happens to the Pets Who Can’t Wait?

In Wisconsin’s Door County, overwhelmed veterinary clinics, workforce shortages and long drives to emergency hospitals are leaving pet owners with frighteningly few options when their animals are critically ill.

When Jessica Chase’s dog Capri began having seizures after a historic Wisconsin snowstorm in March, Chase did what any frightened pet owner would do: she started looking for help.

The problem was that help was nowhere nearby.

The closest 24-hour emergency veterinary hospital was roughly 90 minutes from her Sturgeon Bay home on a good day. This was not a good day. More than two feet of snow covered the area, Capri was having seizures at roughly five-minute intervals, and Chase couldn’t imagine putting her dog in the back seat and attempting the drive to Appleton. Even if they made it there, she was told the emergency hospital was already at capacity and the wait could be several more hours.

Less than 12 hours after the seizures began, Capri died on Chase’s kitchen floor.

“It was the most mortifying experience ever,” Chase told Wisconsin Watch, which documented the growing veterinary access crisis in Door County in an August 2026 investigation by reporter Miranda Dunlap. “It’s basically like my baby.”

Capri’s story is devastating, but in Door County it isn't an isolated example. Depending on where someone lives on the peninsula, the nearest emergency veterinarian may be anywhere from one to three hours away. For owners facing a true medical emergency, that can turn an already frightening situation into a race against time.

The obvious question is why someone doesn't simply open an emergency hospital closer to the community.

The answer reveals just how complicated the veterinary workforce problem has become.

The Local Veterinarians Are Already Full

At Peninsula Veterinary Hospital in Sturgeon Bay, the problem arrives by telephone at least five times every day. People call looking for emergency veterinary care, and the staff tries to work patients into the schedule whenever possible. But a general practice isn't an emergency hospital. Some patients require equipment, staffing and medical capabilities the clinic simply doesn't have.

Meanwhile, the hospital's regular schedule is already overflowing.

Dr. Sherry Billett told Wisconsin Watch that high demand means appointments are routinely scheduled several weeks—and sometimes months—in advance. Other practices aren't accepting new patients, which pushes even more animals toward clinics that are already struggling to keep up.

The team has gotten creative, overlapping appointments and allowing owners to drop pets off for the day so veterinarians can squeeze them between scheduled patients. But there is a limit to how much additional medicine can be packed into a workday, particularly when the practice is also struggling to recruit another veterinarian.

Housing doesn't make recruitment any easier. Wisconsin Watch reported that the average home value in the county is approaching $440,000, creating yet another obstacle for practices trying to convince veterinarians to relocate to a rural community.

And asking those same veterinarians to cover nights and weekends isn't the simple solution it might appear to be.

Why Not Just Put the Local Vets on Call?

After losing her Boston terrier, Butch, during a desperate drive to the emergency hospital in Appleton, Door County resident JoAnne Rosenfeld proposed that local veterinarians rotate responsibility for emergency coverage on nights and weekends.

On paper, the idea sounds reasonable. If 10 veterinarians participated, each doctor might only be responsible for emergency duty every 10 weeks.

But the veterinarians already working in the community say the math doesn't reflect the reality of their lives.

“There is no way that a doctor or nurse could work their full 40- to 50-hour workweek and still be capable and fresh for after-hours or weekend emergencies,” Billett told Wisconsin Watch. “This would add to the stress and the burnout that it is already a constant battle.”

That's an important part of the veterinary shortage conversation. When a community doesn't have enough veterinarians, asking the veterinarians who remain to simply work more hours may temporarily increase access while making the underlying workforce problem even worse.

Emergency medicine also requires more than having a veterinarian willing to answer the phone. A true 24-hour hospital needs veterinary technicians and support staff covering multiple shifts, expensive diagnostic and monitoring equipment, surgical capabilities and enough patients to make the operation financially sustainable.

Door County has roughly 30,000 year-round residents, although more than 2.5 million visitors travel there annually. Billett noted that research suggests a population of around 100,000 may be needed to support a round-the-clock emergency facility.

So Door County finds itself caught in a particularly difficult gap: enough animals need emergency care to create a serious access problem, but the permanent population may not be large enough to sustain the kind of hospital that could solve it.

Wisconsin Can't Simply Produce More Veterinarians Overnight

The shortage starts long before a veterinarian decides where to practice.

Wisconsin has only one veterinary school, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. According to Wisconsin Watch, approximately 2,500 applicants compete for about 100 seats each year, and roughly half of graduates ultimately remain in Wisconsin to practice.

There is plenty of demand from people who want to become veterinarians. The bottleneck is partly capacity.

UW–Madison veterinary dean Dr. Jonathan Levine said the school's existing lecture halls and laboratories physically limit how many students it can admit. The university is now examining renovations that could eventually allow it to increase enrollment and help meet workforce needs in Wisconsin and the surrounding region.

Even increasing veterinary school enrollment, however, doesn't guarantee that graduates will choose rural practice.

Educational debt can influence those decisions. Wisconsin Watch cited American Veterinary Medical Association data showing average veterinary student debt approaching $175,000 among 2025 graduates. Rural, food-animal and public-health positions may pay less than companion-animal jobs in metropolitan areas, leaving young veterinarians balancing where they would like to practice against where they can afford to build a life.

That's why the veterinary shortage is difficult to solve with a single number. Producing more DVMs matters, but so do salaries, debt, housing, geography, support staff availability, working conditions and whether a community has enough demand to financially sustain the veterinary services it needs.

For Pet Owners, None of That Matters During an Emergency

Workforce economics are complicated. Losing an animal because you can't reach a veterinarian isn't.

Rosenfeld believes her dog Butch might still be alive if emergency care had been available closer to home. When the nearly four-year-old Boston terrier began seizing and struggling to breathe, she and her son started the 90-minute drive to Appleton.

Butch died with 18 miles still left to go.

Another Door County resident, Nancy Treleven, has made a six-hour round trip seeking veterinary care for her French Bulldog, Winston. She described the fear of driving with a sick animal while wondering whether she would reach help in time—and what she would do if the emergency left her stranded hours from home.

Those stories illustrate why veterinary access can't be measured only by the number of veterinarians per capita. A veterinarian may technically exist within a region, but if the clinic can't accept new patients, the next available appointment is weeks away, or emergency care requires a multi-hour drive, that veterinarian isn't necessarily accessible when an animal needs help.

Some Relief May Finally Be Coming

Door County isn't getting its own emergency hospital yet, but help may soon be somewhat closer.

Wisconsin Watch reported that Veterinary Emergency Group plans to open a 24-hour emergency hospital in Bellevue, Wisconsin, which would put emergency care approximately 40 miles closer than the current BluePearl hospital in Appleton.

Nationally, lawmakers are also considering ways to make rural veterinary practice more financially attractive. The AVMA is advocating for the Rural Veterinary Workforce Act, which would provide $120,000 in student-loan relief to veterinarians who commit to three years of service in designated rural shortage areas.

Neither solution fixes everything. A closer emergency hospital is still a drive, and loan repayment programs don't create veterinarians overnight. But they represent attempts to address a problem rural communities have been dealing with for decades.

And Door County offers a particularly stark example of why finding solutions matters.

A Veterinary Shortage Looks Different When It's Your Dog

It's easy to discuss the veterinary workforce in terms of projections, graduation rates and supply-and-demand models. Those numbers matter, particularly as veterinary schools consider expanding enrollment and new veterinary programs open across the country.

But workforce shortages eventually become something much more personal.

They become a veterinarian looking at an impossibly full schedule and trying to figure out where one more sick patient can fit. They become a clinic that has been searching for another doctor for months without finding one. They become veterinary professionals being asked to work nights and weekends after already working a full week because there is simply nobody else.

And sometimes they become a pet owner sitting on a kitchen floor with a dog having seizures, knowing the nearest emergency room is 90 minutes away.

That's the part of the veterinary shortage that no workforce projection can fully capture.

For families in communities like Door County, the question isn't simply whether America has enough veterinarians.

It's whether there will be one close enough when their animal needs one most.

This Vet Candy story is based on original reporting by Miranda Dunlap for Wisconsin Watch in collaboration with Door County Knock. Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom.