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Dr. Kate in the Press
MainePets.com Temporary Blog Jan-May 2008
http://mainepets.mainetoday.com/blog.html?id=146213
MainePets.com Interview January 2008
http://mainepets.mainetoday.com/newsfeatures/qa071228.html
Portland Press Herald May 2007
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/local/070509vethouse.html
Portland Press Herald April 2007
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/070421petfood.html
Channel 8 TV March 2007
Veterinarian Makes House Calls4Portland Press Herald Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, ME)
December 26, 2004 Column: SUNDAY CHAT
House calls help her patients relax House calls help her patients relax
Author: MEREDITH GOAD Staff Writer Edition: Final
Section: Maine Life
Page: G1
Dateline: SOUTH PORTLAND Estimated printed pages: 6 Article Text: Some of Dr. Kate Steinhacker's patients aren't getting enough exercise. Others are stressed out by the problems of modern life. But they never say "Ahhhh" when "Dr. Kate" comes to call. They woof. And meow. Steinhacker, 33, is a veterinarian who makes house calls. Her "office" is her apartment, where a microscope greets visitors when they walk through the door. In a storeroom off the kitchen, there are centrifuges, a fridge, vaccines and other supplies. "I have a closet where I keep all my pharmaceuticals," she said. "It works out pretty well." Born in Middletown, Conn., Steinhacker spent summers at her family's camp on Big Lake in Washington County, then moved here permanently with her family in 1984. She graduated from Mt. Ararat High School in Topsham in 1989. She studied history and Russian language at Columbia University in New York City, then after graduation returned to Maine to work. She considered going to law school, but after volunteering at a vet clinic in Brunswick she knew she had found her true calling. She shares her life with a Persian cat named Puddles, a former patient who had trouble hitting the litterbox. "A lot of cats, when they have that problem, they just need to be brought into a different situation," Steinhacker said. "A lot of the time it's stress-related and you can overcome it if you have the right living conditions."
Q: Why did you decide to start making house calls instead of working out of a traditional veterinarian's office?
A: I was working up in Freeport, so I was commuting half an hour each way every day. I was pretty much just coming back here to sleep. Sort of a number of things came together at once. I was doing the standard 15-minute appointments. I took this acupuncture course. I started wanting to use that, and acupuncture takes more than 15 minutes. I didn't have friends up there, so I just decided I can do something on my own, and I can work in my own community and actually get to know people where I live. I'll be working on my own terms, and I'll have! as much time to do acupuncture as I want to. It seemed like a rational, reasonable thing to do.
Q: Had you heard of other vets doing this? Is this a national trend?
A: It's kind of old-fashioned, in a way. Back before there were quite so many clinics, a lot of large-animal vets would also treat small animals on a house-call basis, too. All the Jim Herriot books, he was a house-call vet basically. He also had a clinic, but he treated plenty of dogs and cats as house-call patients. So it certainly has been around for a long time. I have heard of some house-call vets, more now than perhaps in the past, just because I think there are more women entering the field, and some of us have families and jobs and need to be able to make our own hours a little bit more. So I think that may be contributing to it.
Q: Who are your clients? Are they people who are trying to save some time?
A: I think it fits a lot of peoples' lifestyles - busy people who can't get to the clinic very easily, people! who have multiple pets who have trouble getting them all to the clinic at the same time. You know, a lot of cats really freak out when you get the box out. My cat does. She goes and hides immediately. Those people would definitely benefit from having a house call. Also, people who have huge pets, like really big dogs. It's hard to get those dogs back and forth. People who have lots of pets. And then the very old pets who have trouble getting in and out of the car.
Q: Some animals seem to have a sixth sense about when they're going to the vet, and they can get very anxious. Do you find that this is easier on the animal as well, that they're more comfortable?
A: Most of them, yeah. There are some animals who aren't accustomed to being restrained at all at home, and those animals might be a little bit shocked to find that they're actually being held in one spot and being examined at home where they usually feel like they're boss, it's their place. My cat's just like that. When I'd bring her to the clinic, she would become this little ball and say "OK, do whatever you want." But if I try to do something to her here, she says (crossing her arms) "No. My house. I don't have to do it here." Some animals are like that. But a lot of them seem just incredibly relaxed. I take heart rates that are half as fast at home as they are at the clinic. So that says a lot right there.
Q: Do your patients recognize you when you walk in the door?
A: Yes, especially the dogs.
Q: How complicated can your cases get in a situation like this? How are you able to do operations if you're working out of your home?
A: Any surgery that requires gas anesthesia I cannot do because I don't have a mobile gas anesthetic machine, I don't have a technician at the moment to help with that kind of thing. Plus, it's just fundamentally much safer to do that kind of full anesthesia in a clinic that's set up for that kind of thing.
Q: So do you refer people to surgeons if they need that?
A: Yes, absolutely. I cannot do X-rays, also, because I don't have a ! mobile X-ray unit. Intensive-care cases, I refer those to the emergency clinic because they are the best clinic, set up for that kind of work.
Q: What are your cases, primarily?
A: There's the basic stuff, like vaccines and worming and all the basic, preventive medicine. But then I have been seeing really quite a few complicated cases because of the acupuncture. These are cases that have gone through extensive work-ups from a western medical point of view, and for some reason they're not able to be helped by that type of therapy. So they come to me to see if there's anything that I can do to help them.
Q: Can you give me an example of a typical case that can be helped by acupuncture?
A: All kinds of things. Anything from chronic vomiting in cats and chronic diarrhea, chronic skin problems, arthritis. Ear problems, even. I'm treating one dog for seizures who is not responding well enough to all of the western medical treatments available.
Q: How does the cost of this kind of! treatment compare with taking your animal to clinic? A: In terms of my services - the things that I charge for that I provide based on my education, such as the physical exam, any lab test that I run myself - that kind of stuff is very comparable to other vet clinics. The additional fee would be the house call charge, which is anywhere from $20 to $40, depending on how far away it is from here. My medications, I think, are probably a little bit cheaper. My vaccines are probably a little bit cheaper, and that's mostly because my overhead is not as high as a vet clinic, so I don't need to charge X percent more for each vaccine. And also, I philosophically believe that if I'm going to charge, I should be charging for my services rather than for products that I'm selling to someone.
Q: What's your range? Do you work mainly in the Portland-South Portland area?
A: Greater Portland, but I will go as far north as Yarmouth, Cumberland. I'll go as far west as Windham and Gorham. And I'll go as far south as Scarborough. There is another house call vet i! n Scarborough, so if someone calls me from Scarborough I'll ask them first, "Have you tried this other house-call vet?" because I don't want there to be competition between us.
Q: What do you personally get out of this? Is it just nice not to be tied down to an office all day?
A: Well, that's definitely nice, but I think the best thing about it is I actually get to know people, and I get to know the animals really well. I get to see firsthand how they live, what types of things in their lives might be a source of stress. What's great is I can spend a lot of time and really talk to people. In the clinic setting, I had 15 minutes to do a history, a physical exam, diagnosis, a treatment plan, get all the recommendations out there. I felt like I was talking 100 miles an hour. Now I can actually slow down and go over everything, and write it all out for people. And also, just knowing that I'm going to be the one that follows up on every case. I know I'm the only one who's going ! to see this patient over and over again. That makes the owners! feel better, too.
Q: You mentioned you can see what might be stressing the animals in the home. People are so stressed out these days. Do you find that it's the same for animals, and what is it that's making them stressed out?
A: It's different for every animal, but some animals really don't do well spending as much time alone at home inside, particularly high-strung dogs. I think a lot of them are not getting enough exercise. And then the stresses that people bring home, whether people mean to or not - I'm sure they don't mean to - get transferred onto the animals, just like they do onto kids. It's hard for the animals to escape it because everyone is emotionally connected in the household.
Q: How do they manifest that? Chewing up things?
A: Chewing up things. Sometimes dogs will lick one area of their paw over and over and over again. Cats tend to overgroom themselves. Sometimes these urinating-outside-the-box disorders are stress-related. Overeating in pets can also be stress related, or boredom related.
Q: Just like people?
A: Yeah.
Q: What are, say, three things a person can do to make their animal's life better?
A: For dogs, I'd say the big thing is exercise. For cats, I guess don't get too many cats. (Laughs.) Cats are very territorial and hierarchical, and they can really do a traumatic number on one another. When they're having trouble working it out, it can be a huge source of stress for the cats and for the owners, too. I guess another thing is, a big one, is do not follow the directions on the dog food and cat food bags. It's a guarantee that your animal will be overweight. If you should feed two cups, they're probably saying feed three.
Staff Writer Meredith Goad can be contacted at 791 - 6332 or at: mgoad@pressherald.com
Staff photo by Herb Swanson Kate Steinhacker, a veterinarian who makes house calls, checks the heartbeat of Santa's Little Helper, an Italian greyhound, at the home of the dog's owner, Bonney Ryder of Portland. Copyright (c) 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
Record Number: 0412260307
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