Veterinarians have their dog days in LV

Monday, April 17, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.

Veterinarian Kimberly Coyner measures her medical practice in salted peanuts and airport delays - the byproducts of a career in which the Arizona-based animal dermatologist flies to Las Vegas twice a week to treat the city's scratching, shedding, four-legged masses.

Coyner is one of a handful of jet-setting veterinary specialists who regularly touch down in Las Vegas, catering to clients with barking demands too complicated for the corner clinic. For out-of-town animal specialists like Coyner, who counts herself among only 200 board-certified veterinary dermatologists in the world, there's a brisk business in coming and going.

"Basically, this is high-end care," Coyner said. "These are pet owners that consider their animals their children."

Veterinary specialists spend years beyond their basic schooling to become experts at curing sicknesses that weren't treatable years ago. In Las Vegas, they find a growing pool of clients, partly because of the booming population and partly because pet owners are increasingly open to intricate animal medicine, said Chrisopher Yach, a vet at the West Flamingo Animal Hospital.

Coyner sees between 10 and 12 patients a day in Las Vegas. An initial consultation costs $110, and custom-made vaccinations - for allergies, parasites, autoimmune diseases and dermatitis - can run into the hundreds.

Complicated and costly veterinary procedures are everyday fare in dramatic television programs about animal life and death. Pet owners who watch harrowing half-hours about animals beating cancer or having hip replacements are trained to expect extraordinary animal care where once they would have just braced themselves for doggy death.

"The bottom line is that the way we take care of our pets is elevating," Yach said.

Veterinary oncologist Kim Selting teaches in Missouri and travels to the West Flamingo Animal Hospital roughly once a month for two- and three-day stretches, treating animals for cancer with chemotherapy and related measures.

Selting is one of only two veterinary oncologists serving Southern Nevada. Both specialists commute to Las Vegas from out of state and otherwise live in different time zones.

Selting has been traveling to Las Vegas for nearly two years.

"I get to see more cases of unusual cancers and things that are interesting to me scientifically in Vegas," she said. "It's a question of numbers. If I see 50 patients in a weekend, some are going to be unusual."

She typically sees 12 to 17 patients a day in Southern Nevada, a caseload that requires 14-hour shifts. Selting estimates that four out of five pet owners pursue chemotherapy, which generally costs between $3,000 and $6,000 for six months of treatment. Other therapies must last the pet's lifetime.

Jennifer Henry's dog, Baylee, ended up in Selting's care for melanoma that was nearly fatal in December and in remission as of early this year.

Henry has saved an answering machine message her local vet left, misdiagnosing Baylee after months of examination, insisting the dog didn't have cancer but some other unidentifiable disease.

The first veterinary specialist to look at the dog's bloodwork, Jeffrey Geels, a recent out-of-town transplant, was certain the dog has been dying for months and immediately booked the dog an appointment with Selting, Henry said.

Like all of Selting's patients, Baylee is medicated and monitored by local vets between visits from the traveling oncologist.

"I can write up a chemo protocol, they (standard vets) can put an IV in and inject the drug," Selting said. "But understanding if it's working, that's where the finer art of oncology comes in."

Las Vegas could have its first full-time oncologist by August, a new hire at the Las Vegas Veterinary Referral Center, where animals with serious conditions are sent to Geels and colleagues for specialized care.

The Referral Center opened in June and is partially staffed by specialists who commute from Texas and Iowa to perform surgical procedures, administrator Dean Penniman said. Soon, a fleet of full-time local staff specialists will take over the center's typical five to 15 daily surgeries and transform the business into a 24-hour operation.

"Our goal is to have all the specialties under one roof and have a local presence," Penniman said.

While cities with Las Vegas' scope typically have at least one specialized pet care referral center, local vets accustomed to running neighborhood clinics with occasional assistance from traveling specialists might not have seen the need for a full-time specialty facility, Coyner said.

"Maybe it's that the town has a small-town mentality and (veterinarians) just need to catch up with its growth," Coyner said.

Las Vegas vets have traditionally hosted traveling specialists in their clinics, lending exam rooms and referring in-house patients to the out-of-town doctors, Yach said.

Coyner, who works out of two different offices in Las Vegas, said she is endlessly referred patients from local vets who recognize when skin conditions are beyond their scope.

Martha Kibbler has been bringing her dog, Yogi, to Coyner every three months for the past several years. The runaway mutt is being treated for pemphigus, a disorder marked by painful lesions.

"Yogi wandered up to our front door almost septic with infection. My husband wanted to give him a chance," Kibbler said. "Once we were committed and he started getting better, we stayed committed."

Kibbler says she never leaves Coyner's office for less than $200 and often spends as much as $300 buying prescriptions for Yogi, who has since stopped losing his hair but still suffers from flaky scales.

Soon, Yogi may not have to wait for Coyner's out-of-town arrival to schedule an appointment. She is making plans to relocate her permanent practice to Las Vegas next summer.