Coastal Care Mobile Veterinary Services

06/06/2024

Hello Coastal Care Family! We will be closing this afternoon and not reopening until Monday June 10th, 2024.

If you find yourself in need of emergency veterinary services over the weekend please reach out to the local emergency vet's in Wilmington or Myrtle Beach.

Have a great weekend!

Wilmington - Animal Emergency and Trauma Hospital
910-790-1070
50 Greenville Ave, Wilmington 28403

Myrtle Beach - Animal Emergency Hospital of the Strand
843-445-9797
2669 Beaver Run Blvd, Myrtle Beach, SC 29575

05/24/2024

Happy Friday Coastal Care Family! We will be closing this afternoon and not reopening until Tuesday May 28th, 2024 for Memorial Day weekend. We hope you all have a fun and safe weekend. If you do find yourself in need of emergency veterinary services over the weekend please reach out to the local emergency vet's in Wilmington or Myrtle Beach.

Wilmington - Animal Emergency and Trauma Hospital
910-790-1070
50 Greenville Ave, Wilmington 28403

Myrtle Beach - Animal Emergency Hospital of the Strand
843-445-9797
2669 Beaver Run Blvd, Myrtle Beach, SC 29575

05/15/2024

*IMPORTANT PHARMACY UPDATE*

Our new online pharmacy, BlueRabbit will be active tomorrow, Thursday 05/16 Please read below for more information on this switch and reach out if you have any addtional questions. We hope you all are having a great day and thank you for your patience as we make this much needed switch. 🐱🐶

05/10/2024

Good Afternoon Coastal Care Family,

We wanted to make you all aware of some upcoming changes with our online pharmacy. You all should have received an email or will be receiving this email in the next few days from “BlueRabbit” regarding them taking over our online pharmacy requests.

We are doing this because of a few factors with our previous pharmacy, Covetrus. The cost of shipping has continued to rise, autoship orders were not working properly and customer service was not up to our standards. The new pharmacy “Blue Rabbit” is much more customer friendly, has lower shipping costs and is more responsive to us, which helps us, help you and your pets! Any medications that were on autoship through Covetrus previously will be carried over to Blue Rabbit and renewed as long as your pet’s exam is still valid. You will need to log in and update payment information and any account details you would like to update or change.

We are planning to go live with Blue Rabbit next Thursday, May 16th. Any new future orders should be placed through them. The link to the pharmacy will be replaced on our website.

If you have any questions regarding this switch please do not hesitate to reach out to us.

04/11/2024

We celebrate your pets every day and love getting to be their veterinary care team!

but It is offically National Pet day today, April 11th. How are you celebrating with your fur babies? Show us some pictures below 😊

04/04/2024

Spring is here and with the beautiful blooms and activity out doors comes some toxins to watch out for. Check out the common spring poisons for pets below 🌷

03/30/2024

Hi my Coastal Care Family,
I just wanted to give you guys an update on some personal matters that may impact some scheduling. I share this with you all because I hold our friendships dear to my heart and my dedication to the health of your pet is always a priority to me.

That being said, my family is going through a difficult time back in NY and I will be having to go back and forth every couple of weeks for long weekends. Therefore, I may need to rearrange schedules and although I will try to do this ahead of time, there may be a time where it is last minute. I will do my best to get urgent matters taken care of with patients without delay. Toni and Cayla will be available for tech appointments, questions, and triage like usual during business hours during the times I have to be out of the office. I will still report pending labs, send referrals and be available for communication as time allows while I am gone. This may mean I do need to send your pet to the ER or another local clinic, but I do so because I care and would never want your pet to have delayed care.

My time out of office should be limited as I am trying to only go weekends, but I just wanted to keep everyone in the loop if it seems like you hear I’m out of office a little more often for the next couple of weeks to months. I appreciate your grace, understanding, prayers, and love. I will try to keep you updated as best as possible about any schedule changes (planned or sudden).

Sending love always,
Dr. Lauren

03/22/2024

We have the honor of being part of the Career on Wheels event hosted for 900 5th graders of Brunswick County today! Public education of our profession is so important for the future of veterinary medicine. This event is such a great way to introduce kids to mobile professions, including medical and veterinary!

02/22/2024

*EMERGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT*
Once again we are affected by a cellular outage in parts of the county. We will not be able to make/receive phone calls and unfortunately we may not be able to send/receive texts/iMessages as our WiFi in our vehicle is also AT&T. We will connect to WiFi as much as possible throughout our day to answer messages, but please know there may be major delays since we will not be getting your communications. If your pet is having a medical emergency and you cannot reach us, please contact or go to your nearest emergency clinic. We are sorry for the inconvenience but unfortunately have no control over how quickly this is resolved. We will keep you updated.

A cellular outage in the United States was reported by AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and other network users on Thursday, according to Downdetector.com.

02/14/2024

Happy Valentine's Day 💗 Give your furry family members a hug from us at Coastal Care and keep them safe with these holiday safety tips!

02/14/2024

Buying flowers for your sweet heart today? Make sure you wont be spending your evening in the animal ER with our toxic flower list below. 💐 🐾

12/22/2023

Just a reminder we are closed Friday 12/22 until Tuesday January 2nd at 8 AM! We wish you all a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New Year! Thank you all for your love and support this year!

12/20/2023

Update from Dr. Lauren:

It is with a heavy heart that I am informing you that I have had a death in the family and I will be out of office tomorrow. I know this is difficult with us being closed Friday until after the first of the year, but my team will be in contact with everyone with appointments tomorrow to reschedule or make arrangements for tech visits if in need of vaccines for boarding with the upcoming holiday. Toni and Cayla will still be doing all scheduled technician appointments so these appointments are unaffected. They will be available by phone/texts during normal business hours. I appreciate your understanding for this unexpected change in schedule.
Sending love, Dr. Lauren

12/12/2023

Holiday hours update:
CLOSED Friday December 22nd until Tuesday January 2nd!

We wanted to make sure we gave everyone adequate time to reach out for their pet’s needs prior to our extended holiday closure. If you have concerns about your pet in the next week, please contact us sooner rather than later so we can address them before the holiday.

This year has been a busy one for us, especially as we have been mostly a staff of 2 people since the spring. In order for us to best serve our clients and patients, we need to take a break and spend time with family and friends out of state we don’t see often.

Toni annually takes her vacation the week between Christmas and New Years to visit family in NY with her daughter while she’s out of school. Toni absolutely deserves this time off after all of her hard work this year! Please take the time to give her an extra thanks for all of her dedication to the clients, patients, and this practice if you see her!

Dr. Lauren is also going to NY for an extended time with her husband and baby Evelyn to spend time with her family for Christmas. Although Dr. Lauren will be back in town shortly after Christmas, we have our practice and vehicle inspections scheduled for the remainder of that week and Evelyn has some appointments as well.

We apologize for any inconvenience this causes, but hope you all understand we want to be here for the long haul and need a break sometimes too!

In the case of an emergency while we are closed, please contact your nearest emergency clinic in Myrtle Beach or Wilmington.

Hope you all have a safe and happy holiday season! We will see you in 2024!! ❤️❤️

12/06/2023

We have exciting news! We have a new way to communicate to meet your needs more directly! Whether you need to schedule an appointment, request medication refills, or ask a question about your pet's care, we have an app for that!

Why are we doing this you ask? For your sanity and ours! Did you know that Toni does most of our client communication? Every text message, phone call, message, or email sent by any of our 1500 clients, she addresses directly after discussing any concerns/questions with Dr. Lauren. But her work does not stop there...she then has to write that communication in each patient file so we have record of what was discussed/recommended. Using Otto, those messages now sync right into your pet's medical record and eliminates a step on our end. Toni can now stop working after hours so much!

Otto also sends you appointment reminders and allows you to confirm or reschedule right from the message. Any forms that are needed prior to the appointment or summaries sent after your appointment are easily accessed through Otto! You will also finally start to receive your pet's vaccine reminders via text through Otto when they are coming due!

So how can you communicate with us more directly? There are a few options:
1) Download the Otto app from the App Store or Google Play Store. It is easy to use to communicate and streamline your needs/questions.
2) Go to our website www.coastalcaremvs.com and click on the Otto widget banner on the home page. You can request appointments, records, medications, and other needs right from the widget!
3) You can text 910-516-8260 like normal phone number. We will still receive it like a normal text in Otto and can help you easily! This is our new text number and all of our text communications will come from it!

This will take some time to transition, but ultimately it is being done to make it easier for our clients to get information while also helping make our job more efficient! Phone calls will still be accepted at our 910-664-4848 number and any texts received there will be redirected through Otto! So do not worry, we won't miss a communication from you in this transition! Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns!
Sincerely, Dr. Lauren and Toni

11/28/2023

We have been receiving many questions about the reported respiratory illness in dogs that many of you have heard about in the media and read on social media. At this time, we have not seen any increase in respiratory illness in dogs amongst our practice and actually, we saw this illness sweep through our region last summer immensely but with no attention brought to it.

With the holidays, increased travel, increased boarding and increased grooming appointments, the occurrence of respiratory illness is definitely common. “Kennel cough” is the broad term for an infectious illness caught amongst our dog family members. There are precautions to take to prevent respiratory illness such as keeping up to date on vaccinations for dogs who do have risk of exposure, only socializing with dogs you know are healthy, and keeping your dog from socializing if showing any signs of illness (much like we do with illness in humans).

Below is a blog article written by a veterinary internal medicine and veterinary infectious disease specialist about this reported respiratory illness. Although any illness can pose risk for severe illness and rarely death, cases of hospitalization and death with kennel cough like illness is very rare and there are usually other underlying factors. As we learn more, if there is a new respiratory illness we should be made aware of, we will update you all accordingly!

I’ve held off writing about this but since I’ve been answering many emails about it every day, here we go. The questions I keep getting (as usual) are

11/20/2023

Good morning CCMVS family! We just wanted to make you aware of our holiday hours this week!

We will be CLOSED Thursday 11/23 and Friday 11/24. Please note we will NOT have any off hours communications this long weekend. So if you need medication refills or have any concerns for your pets this week, please contact us prior to Wednesday afternoon. We will resume normal business hours and communications Monday 11/27 at 8 am.

If you have a medical emergency or urgent question regarding if your pet needs to be seen from 11/23-11/26, please contact your nearest emergency clinic in Myrtle Beach or Wilmington.

We hope you all have a safe and happy Thanksgiving! 🦃 🍁

10/31/2023

Happy Halloween to all!! Please remember to keep chocolates out of reach, keep your pets in a secure place while the door bell is ringing, and watch your cats for playing with decorations that can cause obstruction!! We hope everyone had a fun but safe night!

Here are some of our best patient costumes this year!

10/30/2023

Just a heads up, Dr. Lauren will be out of office Thursday 11/2-Monday 11/6. Toni and Jenny will be seeing tech appointments and of course available for help via phone or text. If you have a medical emergency with your pet, we recommend seeing the ER in Wilmington or Myrtle Beach and all follow up care can be scheduled with us when Dr. Lauren is back if required. We are sorry for any inconvenience this causes! Please contact us with any questions or concerns!

10/24/2023

Update as of 9:50 AM: Service is back and we are receiving all calls/texts as normal for right now. If anything changes we will let you know! Have a great day everyone!

*IMPORTANT: Once again there is an AT&T outage in Brunswick county, at least in a lot of our usage area. We have no cell phone service at this time. We can only receive iMessages when connected to WiFi. If you have an android or any other type of cell phone, we unfortunately have no way of communicating with you. Please email us and we will try to answer when we can connect to WiFi. THERE MAY BE A DELAY IN COMMUNICATIONS. We have no ETA as to when this will be resolved. Please share! Thank you!***

10/16/2023

It’s Veterinary Technician week! So if you see Jenny and Toni this week, give them an extra thank you for all they do to love and care for your pets! Vet techs certainly do not get enough credit for all that they do to love and care for your pets. This practice would be nothing without them and I am so thankful for them!! ❤️

Thank you Toni and Jenny!!!!

08/30/2023

Update on services for 8/31:

We have rescheduled our morning appointments and will not be out on the road until we know road conditions are safe. We plan on seeing our afternoon appointments as scheduled. We will be answering the phone as usual during normal business hours.

Everyone please be safe! Let us know if you need anything!
❤️ The Coastal Care Team

08/28/2023

Hi Coastal Care Family!
We are monitoring the weather closely for Thursday. We are supposed to be on the road doing house calls so we will have to make decisions based on the safety and ability to get to each appointment (pending any bridge closures or road flooding). We will contact those of you with appointments on Thursday as soon as we know our ability to make house calls that day! We promise we will be in touch and will not close unless it is absolutely necessary! Thank you always for continued understanding and support! Please be safe and let us know if we can help in any way!
❤️Dr. Lauren, Toni and Jenny

08/17/2023

Hello Coastal Care friends and family!

Just a quick update. Dr. Lauren is out of office the remainder of this week until Wednesday of next week. I will still answer your calls, texts, and emails as well as doing a tech day Friday and Monday of next week. If you need something urgently, please note that I may not be able to accommodate the requests (depending on what it is of course). If you have a medical emergency, I would urge you to seek care at one of the recommended emergency facilities.

As always, thank you for your love and support! We couldn’t do this without each and every one of you!!

Ps- HAPPY NATIONAL BLACK CAT DAY!!

08/14/2023

Exciting week for the Coastal Care team this week! We are hosting “vet camp!”

For those of you who do not know, Dr. Lauren spent many days learning about veterinary medicine by spending time at the vet clinic with her Aunt Michelle who is a veterinarian. Without those experiences, Dr. Lauren would not be where she is today! Dr. Lauren’s cousin Kalleigh had asked to come work with her this summer and she could not be happier to share this experience with Kalleigh just as she did with her aunt as a little girl.

Kalleigh traveled with her family all the way from Connecticut to visit her cousins (Dr. Lauren and Evelyn) at the beach! She is joining our team for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to learn more about veterinary medicine. Kalleigh hopes to work in a zoo some day and loves animals as much as we do! We are excited for you all to meet her and for her to meet all of our Coastal Care family (humans and four legged friends)! Please say hi to Kalleigh when you see her! ❤️🐾

07/11/2023

*IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT*
Update as of 7:05 PM 7/11: We still do not have service. AT&T says this will be fixed by midnight Wednesday 7/12. It has affected Calabash to Wilmington. Our WiFi in our car is also AT&T so we have no internet on the road. We are trying as best as possible to get to places we can check messages and respond. Please know we will be working after hours to get communications done, but it will take time! Please be patient! Thank you for your understanding.

AT&T is currently down in our area. We are unable to receive or make phone calls at this time and texts that are not through iMessage cannot be returned or received. This is affecting the area we are in, not just our phone. We are sorry for the inconvenience and we hope it will be fixed in a timely fashion.

07/10/2023

We are so humbled by the interest in our practice. We opened a set amount of slots for new clients and they have all been filled within a few days of accepting new clients.

We would love to help everyone and we wish we could take on more clients than we have. But due to the small and mobile nature of our practice and Dr. Lauren being our only doctor, we simply cannot. Our goal is to provide quality, gold standard medical care while still giving each family and patient one on one time they deserve.

For those that have sent their new client paperwork, please be patient as we are entering your records and reaching out to schedule appointments if needed. Any one who has contacted us prior to this post is accepted as we still filter through calls/voicemails/texts/emails etc. We will send new client paperwork to you if you have not received it yet.

Thank you for all of the support and love always! We love our clients and patients dearly! 🩷🐾

07/05/2023

Just a friendly reminder…
Toni is on vacation this week so Dr. Lauren has the phone. In addition to seeing a full schedule, she is also training our new staff. Non-emergent communication will be delayed, but she will contact you by the end of the day (it may be after hours). Please be patient and thank you so much for your understanding!

07/01/2023

Little Evelyn needs some rest after working hard this past week! We will be closed Monday 7/3 and Tuesday 7/4 for the 4th of July holiday. If your pet is experiencing a medical emergency, please contact your nearest emergency clinic in Myrtle Beach or Wilmington. Their information can be found on our voicemail and our website!

We will resume normal hours Wednesday 7/5, but please be aware Dr. Lauren will be working with limited staff due to staff vacations. Non-emergent communications may be delayed! Thank you for your understanding!

Have a safe and happy 4th with your friends, family, and fur babies! ❤️🤍💙

06/24/2023

Look at this handsome boy! This famous Friskie’s model is one of our beloved patients! Looking good Nikon! ❤️😻