We had the good fortune of connecting with Eve Harrison, VMD, CVA and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Eve, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
I actually serve two communities with my veterinary house call practice. My goal is to make changes in the way we take care of animals, and simultaneously I have a strong investment in changing how we care for other veterinarians & vet techs in our community.

As a veterinarian, I have practiced, lectured, & published internationally. My work with animals in clinics, emergency rooms, & operating rooms in many different places over the past 15-20 years has made it very clear that veterinary medicine in the clinic is stressful for almost everyone involved: the patients of course, but also their caregivers. Sometimes the veterinary team suffers tremendously as well, given the level of human & animal trauma we see every day. It is important to remember that we are all connected. Animals and their human caregivers (including their veterinarians) share an emotional bond. So when we are stressed, our animals can become stressed. When our animals are stressed, we are stressed.

This is problematic, as we know that stress hormones, such as cortisol, physiologically impede healing & can exacerbate medical conditions in our patients, & can wear on veterinary providers, leading to depression, anxiety, & compassion fatigue.

For a very long time, I was dissatisfied with my career & my profession. For years, I was formulating ideas about how I wanted the industry to be different— for our patients, but also for the practitioners. Over time, & through a lot of lessons learned the hard way, I slowly developed an unconventional approach to address some of the unique issues that animals and their veterinarians face. I realized that I ultimately needed to start working with a new paradigm for animal & human wellness (which are not entirely separate from each other)…. and I knew that if I wanted things to be different, I had to start something new.

I discovered my true calling when I opened my Los Angeles based veterinary house call practice in 2016, focusing on a blend of holistic & western care for animals.

Once I started my house call practice, I began to see the difference it was making to work with animals and their caregivers in the comfort of their homes, when possible. I have worked with numerous animals receiving care in a relaxed and peaceful state because they can continue to have the rest and comfort they need at home. Even the humans are much more relaxed and comfortable. I’ve found that it is a joy to work this way and has a completely different feel from practicing medicine in the clinical environment. In recent years, there has been tension between animal caregivers & veterinarians. Often this is associated with a lack of understanding of how much it truly costs to provide good care for animals. I felt that tension soften as well in my house call practice.

As a house call vet, I am personally able to be so much more present & loving with my patients & clients… in a way that I was never able to provide when working in a clinic. I have agency & freedom over my life, my time, & the way I would like to care for my patients.

It took me a very long time to find my way in my industry, but once I found it, I knew I had to share it.

I’ve had numerous veterinarians approach me to learn how to create house call practices of their own. And I found myself loving that I could teach other veterinarians how they could find satisfaction, freedom, & the paradigm shift that I’ve experienced through starting my own house call practice.

I decided to start providing coaching for veterinarians & I built an online course, called The House Call Vet Academy, to help empower veterinarians to create mobile practices of their own.

I feel so much satisfaction knowing that I am changing my community & industry, by helping veterinarians rekindle a love for their work, find self realization, and in turn, create a better veterinary experience for animals & their humans.

What should our readers know about your business?
Marigold Veterinary is a traveling house call service for animals in the greater Los Angeles area. We create a compassionate and personalized experience for you and your furry family members. Our practice provides wellness and preventative care as well as senior pet care, in the comfort of home using traditional Western veterinary medicine in addition to Traditional Chinese Medicine, acupuncture, massage, therapeutic movement, Ayurvedic medicine, and holistic pain management techniques. We aim for you to feel connected and involved in the decision-making process in a way that will bring you closer to your beloved companion.

We deliberately keep our practice small, as we treat each pet individually as though they were our own. When we treat an animal, we do not just see a physical body. We see the whole animal, their personality, as well as the needs of their family.

We believe that medicine must be holistic in approach, whether we call it by that name or not. We believe that healing modalities should be deeply restorative for both the patient and the caregiver. We know that we must address the mind, body, and spirit of both the patient, the caregiver, and ourselves, in order to create and sustain a net positive outcome. If you feel the same way and want to provide this level of veterinary care for your best friend, please contact us!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I love this question!!!! In terms of hiking and natural places to explore, I’d recommend checking out Temescal Canyon, the Ballona Marsh Wetlands, Topanga, Malibu, Self Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine, and the Stoneview Nature Center, but honestly there are too many good ones to be able to do justice to this question! My favorite restaurants in the city include Malibu Farms on the pier, Gjusta, Tara’s Himalayan Cuisine, El Texate, Industry Cafe & Jazz, the restaurants in Little Ethiopia, Thai Vegan, Cafe Gratitude, & Sage Plant Based Bistro. I also highly recommend to check out Venice Beach, the Venice canals, and the Venice farmer’s market on Sundays 🙂

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would love to dedicate this shoutout to my dear friend Dr. Marcia Medrano, who is an awesome house call veterinarian in San Francisco. Her practice was one of the main inspirations for me to take the leap & create my own practice in 2016. I would also like to shout out the amazing community of house call veterinarians in several facebook groups I am a part of. There are so many mobile vets & in-progress mobile vets that have become cherished friends, even though I’ve never met some of them in real life! I also wanted to shoutout my coach Nicole Riccardo, who helped encourage me to bring my experiences to life in the form of The House Call Vet Academy online course, so that I can continue to help others.

Website: www.marigoldveterinary.com and www.thehousecallvetacademy.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marigold_veterinary/ and https://www.instagram.com/the_house_call_vet_academy/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarigoldVeterinary and https://www.facebook.com/TheHouseCallVetAcademy

Other: www.thehousecallvetacademy.com

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