Ambulance service gets sick pets to emergency care

By JAMIE GUMBRECHT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, May 11, 2009

Andrew Zbeeb’s ambulance will never be mistaken for those diesel-powered boxes flying toward Grady Hospital, lights blazing, sirens howling. It’s smaller, first of all, a Chevy Tahoe with the words “Emergency Vehicle” painted in red. Andrew Zbeeb started the service for owners unable to drive their pets and vets moving patients. His van has an amber light like wreckers’. And then there are his patients: Roxy, with her bum shoulder, and Oliver, bloodied and woozy after an attack. Stymie could hardly breathe on his own and little Peanut just couldn’t stop vomiting. The pit bull, the Chihuahua, the one-eyed Solomon Island Eclectus parrot and the short-haired gray cat all needed Zbeeb’s speed and equipment. His ambulance is animals-only. The survival rate on those four: 100 percent.

He started the service for owners unable to drive their pets in times of need, for vets transferring patients into specialized care and animals who might need more than a soft blanket and a chew toy. Things furry, feathered and scaly are what Zbeeb knows best. He’s 28 and has been running Frogs to Dogs, a pet-sitting and training service in Kirkwood, for six years. In the span of a few weeks in 2007, two dogs in his care needed emergency treatment. Pemba, a 13-year-old shepherd mix with white fur and a twisted spleen, lived. Rocky, a boxer with a similar malady, got stuck in Atlanta traffic. As the dying pup whimpered in his back seat, he thought, “I can do better.” She survived only an hour after arriving at the vet.

“Better” cost Zbeeb $20,000, plus emergency vehicle insurance. He bought the Tahoe and retrofitted it with a mastiff-sized steel cage, muzzles, first aid supplies, GPS, oxygen tank and animal-shaped masks. His team doesn’t administer drugs but is trained in CPR and first aid, and veterinary technicians are available to ride along. He’s on-call around the clock, at $50 to $150 per hour.

Among his clients so far: a dog hit by a car, a cat fallen ill while its owner was stuck at work and Stymie, the parrot with an upper respiratory problem. He needed steady oxygen to make it from a Cobb County ER to an avian vet in Decatur. They realized a cat-sized oxygen mask fit nicely on his green feathered face. “We’re all learning,” Zbeeb said, “even the vets.”

Nobody has exactly asked for animal ambulance service but local veterinarians have long struggled with home-care and pick-up requests from car-less pet owners or older clients who couldn’t lift their large animals. So far, Zbeeb says it’s gotten four to 12 calls per month. “Quite honestly, I didn’t think there was going to be much of a niche for it,” said Will Draper, a veterinarian with Animal Emergency Center of Decatur. But he was surprised by the number of clients they have referred to the ambulance and the variety of ways pet owners found it useful.

One Saturday night last summer, Anthy Petropoulos walked her Chihuahuas, Oliver and Elvis, a few blocks from home in Kirkwood. She spotted a loose pit bull moving toward them at a fast clip and within seconds, the larger dog snatched Oliver by his neck and shook him like a toy. Petropoulos screamed and smacked the big dog but it wouldn’t let go. Zbeeb, who lived nearby and heard the commotion, ran outside to help. After they caught the frantic little black dog in a towel, Zbeeb drove to the nearest vet’s office while Petropoulos held an oxygen mask on Oliver’s white snout. “Meltdown,” is how she describes it but she remembers that Zbeeb stayed calm. Her dog was in surgery for hours, as a surgeon cleaned eight puncture wounds to his 10-pound body. “I was in no shape to be driving. I didn’t even know where the emergency vet was,” said Petropoulos, who now keeps the ambulance number in her phone. “It just happened so quickly, there was blood everywhere. When something like this happens, you don’t have common sense.”

At the time, Zbeeb had a temporary emergency light permit, which allowed him to roll through intersections and speed through traffic, just like an ambulance for humans. Then-DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones signed off on the permit, certifying he believed it was in the community’s best interest. The state commissioner of public safety subsequently denied it. Instead, Zbeeb got a permit for an amber light, a caution signal also found on wreckers and salt trucks. “I’m sure it’s a good cause and I know people love their pets but at the end of the day, it’s a dog or it’s a cat. It’s not like another human being,” Georgia State Patrol Lt. Paul Cosper said. “It was not a proven need. They don’t just give these things out willy-nilly.” [Not very compassionate, Lt. Cosper -- ed.]

Few animal ambulances exist in the United States and owners said they’d be surprised to find even one that’s classified like a human ambulance. Andy Berg owns 12 ambulances that serve Southern California’s dogs, cats, llamas, miniature horses and once, a dead Sumatran tiger. Expenses and state restrictions prevent him from seeking out a emergency vehicle permit, he said, and it’s not necessary most of the time. Ben Brainard, an assistant professor of critical care at University of Georgia’s College of Veterinary Medicine, said it’s not clear yet whether time spent finding a veterinary ER, loading an animal into the car and driving can mean the difference between life and death. “Until [more ambulance] services exist, we may not have a good idea,” Brainard said. “In the context of … having a trained driver getting you there 15 or 20 minutes faster, veterinary studies are too sparse.”

Zbeeb hasn’t appealed the state’s decision but still believes his experience and equipment keep pets and their owners safer — they don’t have to handle injured animals, drive frantically along unfamiliar routes or find hospitals they’ve never seen. “We’re talking about life, a form of life,” Zbeeb said. “I did prove a need — the state doesn’t agree with my need.”

http://www.frogstodogs.com/