Pets After Dark

20/08/2024

Happy 10th birthday Dixie Ray!! 08-20-2024❤️🎉

18/08/2024

Pets After Dark is at Seven Fields Veterinary Hospital! If you are in the neighborhood today, please stop by to say hello to the amazing staff and meet Pets After Dark!!

17/08/2024

Pets After Dark friends, come meet Pets After Dark and the awesome staff of Seven Fields Veterinary Hospital this Sunday!

14/08/2024

Clinical Trial: in our most recent newsletter we showcased a clinical trial being conducted by Dr. Edward MacKillop a neurosurgeon at BluePearl Pet Hospital Pittsburgh North on brain tumors. Please check out the study and pass on to anyone that has a dog that could be a candidate. Important work being done right here in Pittsburgh!

12/08/2024

Welcome one of our latest PADPAWS Remy! Sweet Standard Poodle Remy❤️❤️❤️

10/08/2024

We are stoked to welcome Affordable Care Veterinary Clinic to the Pets After Dark network! Good time getting to know this great group of veterinary professionals! Welcome aboard!

09/08/2024

If you have a new puppy or a kitten, you need Pet After Dark!

08/08/2024

Did your pet eat something they should not have? Pets After Dark can help! Call us before you go to the ER. We can save you time and money!

06/08/2024

Having a sick pet can be stressful! It always happens at night. Now you have a choice. Instead of spending hours at the ER and lots of $$$ and stress, call Pets After Dark and get connected to a local veterinarian immediately!

06/08/2024

Three years ago we brought Mabel Z home. This is her sleeping in the airport waiting for the plane and then under the seat on the plane waiting for the fun to begin! And the fun just keeps going! Happy “Gotcha Day” Mabel! ❤️

02/08/2024

Please read this heartfelt article about Love and Loss by our amazing Medical Director, Dr. Caroline Simard-Swimmer:

Love and Loss

“'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Alfred, Lord Tennyson

As the plane lifts off the tarmac, I experience a deep sense of loss leaving my home country having just said goodbye to my mother for the last time. Up in the clouds I let grief envelop me, reflecting on love and loss. Losing loved ones hurts. Losing a pet can hurt just as much given that what we grieve is the loss of a deep emotional connection; a presence that provides comfort and companionship and who loves us right back.

Over the course of my life as a veterinarian and as a pet owner myself I have come across grief and loss more often than I’d like to remember. The profound bond that forms between us and our furry companions makes losing them incredibly painful. Sometimes it can be hard for people who don’t have animals to understand the grief and loss that is experienced by an animal lover.

The pain of that loss can also be associated with deeper undercurrents of sadness: for example, a senior citizen losing a last animal before moving to a retirement home that doesn’t allow pets, a cancer diagnosis in a pet while the owner himself is undergoing chemotherapy, the loss of a very first pet that signifies the loss of childhood. Feelings of guilt associated with a decision to euthanize an animal can sometimes be present and although considered to be a normal stage of the grieving process, guilt can be very overwhelming . Veterinarians are deeply, by nature, empathetic and compassionate. They can help you with difficult decisions concerning the care of a pet and the feelings associated with a pet’s passing.

Talking to friends and family and feeling love and support from people close to us can help us manage feelings of sadness.

I feel particularly lucky to count Tyler Wantiez as a colleague at the Point Breeze Veterinary Clinic. Tyler is a licensed veterinary technician who is also a social worker. He has proved himself to be an invaluable resource for pet owners. There is also a wide range of help available for those who might need it: online websites dedicated to grief, books, group sessions specializing on pet loss and even individual therapy. (Please see below for further information and resources)

It’s become clear to me over the years that grief is an emotion that is better if shared. Isn’t that the point of gathering for funerals? To share our feelings of loss while sharing memories, stories and embrace our loved ones. Out of despair resilience is born, and in time makes way for peace and the capacity to love again.

I’ve been thinking about my mother a lot and she always used to quote Tennyson to me: better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all. I myself have repeated it occasionally to grieving pet owners over the years and it rings true to me today as I leave my hometown.

I love you Mummy.

In loving memory of Lucille Labbé Simard
1935 - 2024

01/08/2024

Excited to welcome Greentree Animal Clinic to the Pets After Dark network! Help us say hello!

30/07/2024

Caroline and I are honored and proud that we were asked to co-author an article for the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle about the profound impact pets have on your life. We are excited to share it with you.

30/07/2024

Caroline and I are honored and proud that we were asked to co-author an article for the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle about the profound impact pets have on your life. We are excited to share it with you:

Having pets in your life changes everything.

17/07/2024

Concerned your pet ate something ? MUST WATCH!! And Share with your pet owner friends!

In this video, Dr. Simard-Swimmer, Medical Director and Co-Founder of Pets After Dark, details what to do when you think your pet may have gotten into somet...

12/07/2024

PLEASE READ and share: This is important!

Morning, noon and night, if you have a pet, you will need a veterinarian. Recently Florida and California passed bills that give tele-health providers the permission to practice veterinary medicine with the ability to establish a veterinary-client-patient-relationship (VCPR) online. A VCPR allows veterinarians to provide diagnoses, treatment plans, and prescriptions virtually. This is new territory in veterinary medicine and we would like to break this down for you.

Let’s start with what we do. Pets After Dark is a veterinary tele-health provider. We are available to provide after-hours expert advice by licensed veterinarians from across the Greater Pittsburgh Area. What we can’t and don’t do is prescribe medication, diagnose or suggest treatment plans. So, how are we of any value? Funny you should ask. If you suspect your pet is sick, we are the first resource you should contact if your primary veterinarian is gone for the day. We can help you methodically decide the best course of action for you and your pet to get through the night peacefully and back to your own veterinarian tomorrow for a checkup, diagnoses and prescription if needed. If you require an emergency room, we will recommend that and make what we refer to as a “warm transfer”. This is a call from our on call veterinarian to the ER with a heads up to the ER doctors that you are on the way. We will forward your medical records electronically (if you are a subscriber) to the ER and a current medical summary (even if you are not a subscriber) of what is happening so that when you arrive, the emergency room staff is expecting you. This helps to remove much of the wait time and anxiety associated with this journey. And your experience will be much better.

Tele-health is meant to be a compliment to traditional veterinary care. It is not, under any circumstance, meant to be a replacement. This is where it gets a little tricky. With the passing of these bills in Florida this month and California back in October of 2023, the path away from traditional veterinary medicine has gained some momentum and if you ask any local veterinarian, they will tell you it is not a good thing. But inertia can be powerful. The bills are being proposed, lobbied and passed by politicians, typically against the will of the veterinary community. And what is driving this is the desire for non-veterinary businesses like Walmart and Chewy wanting to be in the veterinary business, though neither of them are, putting your pets at risk. In the case of Chewy, they sell pet products, better than most, but they are not veterinarians. You wouldn’t go to the car dealer to have your bicycle repaired! Veterinarians at their core are well intentioned and empathetic and those working in the veterinary space have animal welfare front and center at all times, not profit. We support both privately owned clinics as well as corporate owned and in both scenarios, there are great veterinarians doing amazing work! And we will do whatever we can to continue to support the local veterinarian. That is the crux of our position. STAY LOCAL!

The proponents of these bills state that tele-health in this format provides increased access to care especially in rural areas where veterinary care is in short supply. While we may agree with this to a certain extent, Pets After Dark has numerous network providers (clinics) and subscribers in these areas and we always work in conjunction with local veterinarians. Our service encourages the pet owner to go back to their regular veterinarian the next day. We believe in this premise so much so that we actually guarantee and book that appointment for you, with your own veterinarian, the next day! And while there are instances that do not require a visit to the veterinarian, we can help you make that decision so your pet receives the best care needed.

The veterinarian’s point of view with this potential shift always yields the same concerns: delay in proper diagnoses, hence increased suffering for the pet and ultimately increased cost to the pet owner. In the Journal of American Pediatrics, a study found that telemedicine lead to improper or over-prescribing of antibiotics to kids. And the long term negative effects of this are well documented. It is only logical to believe that this condition will be the same with pets if we allow this new formulation to take hold.

Back when we started the development of Pets After Dark, we did quite a bit of our own research. We spoke with veterinarians, pet owners, ER clinics, the AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association), the PVMA (Pennsylvania VMA), the WPVMA (Western Pennsylvania VMA), insurance companies, etc. You get the point. We spoke to everyone! We booked numerous appointments with online services to scope out the marketplace. We even paid to book a tele-health Zoom appointment on line with one of the big discount house pet tele-health providers. What happened next was insane! The Zoom call lasted no more than five minutes. The “doctor” that we were Zooming with never once showed her face, only a stock photo of a dog. After a few minutes, she prescribed a medication for a condition we were describing. This, by the way, is completely illegal. They got around part of the legalese issue by having a Pennsylvania veterinarian on the prescribing end. This deals with the “across state lines” issue. But it is still completely out of bounds as this veterinarian never physically examined our dog, that’s the lack of VCPR we discussed above. There are so many things wrong with this example, too many to detail here.

So we share this today as one of the most consequential topics we have written about since we launched our weekly newsletter. At Pets After Dark, we are very pro-technology. We built our own system to accommodate all of our service requirements. This includes privately and securely housing sensitive medical records and personal info, clinic contacts, ability to execute calendar bookings around the city, video conferencing, to name a few. But at our core, providing the best veterinary care is our mission. And while we rely on technology to help us serve the pet community to the best of our ability, human touch is not something that has a substitute. We are committed to doing our part to keep the human element in veterinary medicine to assure the best health for your pet.

Howard Swimmer
CEO and Co-Founder
Pets After Dark

Photo courtesy of AVMA

07/07/2024

We posted this great video a couple weeks ago talking about heat related illnesses. If you didn’t see it, check it out! It’s going to be a hot one again and you can never be too cautious!

02/07/2024

Happy 4th of July 🇺🇸from our family to yours! We hope you have a great holiday!

At Pets After Dark we realize that sometimes pets are sick during the holidays. We are here to help you keep your pets safe for both Subscribers and Single Consultations. You can head over to our website at www.mypetsafterdark.com and pick one of our two options to get connected to a local veterinarian in minutes, Subscriptions and Single Consultations available.

Holiday hours
Thursday, July 4th, 8am-midnight
Friday, July 5th, 7pm-midnight
Saturday and Sunday July 6th & 7th
8am-midnight

Pets After Dark is a breakthrough solution to after-hours veterinary care

26/06/2024

Check out this great explanation by Dr. Caro Simard to a question we have all wondered about when we go to the veterinarian for annual vaccines! Enjoy!

What is Leptospirosis?

There are days when I update vaccines in a patient and realize that the owner has no idea what the vaccine is for but will happily comply to my recommendations. Leptospirosis is one of those illnesses that most people have heard of but very few could actually say what it is, how it is transmitted and why their pet is vaccinated for it. I then find myself going into a quick explanation of the disease in thirty seconds or less which is a terrible shame because it is such a fascinating bacteria for a nerd like me!

There are over 250 types of bacteria called leptospira that are all slightly different from each other. There are at least 6 that will cause significant clinical disease in dogs. Depending on the bacteria that infects our dog, the symptoms can be most commonly a liver or kidney infection, but can also be ocular, digestive, pulmonary, coagulation or neurological symptoms. The risk of severe infection and death is higher in younger animals, especially puppies under 6 months.

Rice field workers in ancient China used to get ill from “jaundice fever” as it was described then and is believed to have been brought to the New World by Europeans around 1620. It was first described by a German physician named Adolf Weil in 1886 who reported an acute disease with jaundice and nephritis: leptospirosis is aptly named Weil’s disease in humans.

Rodents are most commonly the vectors of this infection, but most species have been reported as carriers including livestock, raccoons , skunks , opossums and dogs just to name a few. The bacteria is transmitted by the urine of infected animals and can survive in the right environment for months before infecting a host.

Dogs will get infected through damp grass, standing water, mud and lakes that have been contaminated. Some animals that have been infected will never actually manifest the illness and still shed the bacteria in their urine for months to years thus perpetuating the infection.

There seems to be an uptick of infection after floods. Areas that historically get the most rain like the Appalachia see an increased concentration of cases.

As our climate changes and we see more of these torrential rains and floods the incidence of leptospirosis will undoubtedly increase which makes vaccination of all dogs of the utmost importance. It was thought that cats used to be immune to the disease. However we now know that despite rarely showing clinical signs of the illness they can still shed the bacteria in their urine, as cats are renowned rodent hunters. The bacteria is even perceived to play a role in chronic kidney disease in cats according to certain studies although that is still up for debate.

Infected dogs can transmit the infection through urine to the pet owners which becomes a public health concern. We as humans can be particularly susceptible to the disease through oral contamination or a cut. I remember a story about Cambridge University’s students in England jumping in the river Cam to celebrate the end of term, only to fall ill a few days later of acute leptospirosis infection. It had been a particularly rainy spring and pockets of livestock around the area had been deemed responsible for contamination of the river.

So the next time your veterinarian recommends that you get the “lepto vaccine”, not only will you now know what they are recommending and why, you might just find yourself Googling Banksy! 🐀

24/06/2024

Excited to introduce you to this week’s PADPAWS Vinny and the newest PADPAWS puppy, Roberta! ❤️Super excited to have these pups in the Pets After Dark family and we look forward to watching Roberta grow up.

20/06/2024

Heat related illness in pets is serious stuff! PLEASE watch this video and learn to spot the signs. We love our pets and we need to take care of them in this heat! PLEASE SHARE with all of your pet friends!! Thank you!

17/06/2024

Say hello to this week’s PADPAWS, Reacher! Next week, this sweet Brtittany Spaniel will celebrate his seventh birthday! Help us welcome Reacher to the Pets After Dark family!

11/06/2024

Say hello to this weeks PADPAWS Mia, Falkor and Jack! Welcome to the Pets After Dark family! ❤️❤️

06/06/2024

Happy birthday to our most special Aussie, Mabel Z! Three years old today. Sweet, happy, loving, funny, energetic, and likes: treats, her food, her sister’s food, watermelon, parmesan cheese, her sister’s treats, running like there is no tomorrow and above all, anything that will put a smile on your face! HBD Mabel! ❤️❤️

04/06/2024

This weeks PADPAWS-meet Betty the Golden Retriever- she is just shy of her 7th birthday in July. She is such a sweetie! Rumor has it Betty is a regular in the memory care units! ❤️Help us welcome Betty to the Pets After Dark family.

02/06/2024

This past week we excitedly shared our partnership with Humane Animal Rescue of Pittsburgh. Check out this great read by Dr. Amy Kalinauskas, Amy Rose HARP Senior Medical Director of Medical Services at Humane Animal Rescue Pittsburgh. Enjoy!

Pets, People, Community and Good Will

“Trippy recovered well and became a completely different, social cat following her surgery”


Humane Animal Rescue of Pittsburgh has many goals when it comes to the care of our animals. Three of our main goals are to expand access to care, create a new lease on life for some animals that may otherwise be euthanized, and fight overpopulation. As the Senior Director of Medical Services, I am very passionate about fighting for these goals.

HARP has many programs directed towards expanding access to care but one near and dear to many of our medical team members’ hearts is our Humane Health Coalition program in coordination with Allegheny Health Network’s Center for Inclusion Health. Through this program, we provide veterinary care to housing-challenged individuals, which allows them to keep their pets with them. HARP now, with its new M.O.V.E.S. (Mobile-Outreach-Veterinary-Essential-Support), has its own mobile vet unit fully fitted with a surgical unit, anesthesia, wet sink, an exam table and even seating for the pet’s owner(s).

Recently, I was able to provide multiple surgical procedures during the same anesthetic event to a small dog to improve her quality of life. Not only were we able to spay her and eliminate her risk of pyometra, (an infection of the uterus) but we were also able to amputate her forelimb that was causing chronic pain due to a chronically luxated elbow. This sweet little pup also received extensive dental extractions to alleviate the pain caused by her diseased teeth; her final surgery was to remove a cancerous mammary mass. This little girl is just one example of how HARP is dedicated to expanding access to care and allowing animals to remain with their loved ones.

The surgical skills and capabilities since I have been at HARP have expanded exponentially. Through the great teamwork of our medical management and medical team, as well as the dedication of our Executive Director, Ariella Samson, we have been able to give animals chances that would otherwise have been euthanized in the past. We recently received a sweet kitty named Trippy through our transport program who had a tail injury with multiple chronic fractures as well as compression of multiple disc spaces. This injury was extremely painful to Trippy and required a radical tail amputation almost at the pelvis. Trippy recovered well and became a completely different, social cat following her surgery. As of today, Trippy has recovered from her surgery and is awaiting her forever loving home.

Shelter medicine as a whole has a goal of fighting pet overpopulation. Castration eliminates the risk of accidental litters and decreases the number of kittens and puppies being born into the world where there are not enough homes for them. Castration also eliminates the risk of pyometras, which will lead to decreased senseless deaths for a treatable condition.

HARP is always looking for individuals who share our goals in expanding our veterinary care and the improvement of animals’ lives. My time at HARP has been very rewarding. Being able to spend everyday around sweet dogs and cats looking for their forever home is the most gratifying career I can think of. When you think of animal welfare, we hope you will think of HARP!

30/05/2024

There are many organizations around Pittsburgh focused on the different facets of pet care, in our opinion, very few excel at the level of Humane Animal Rescue of Pittsburgh. It is for this reason that Pets After Dark has chosen HARP as our primary charity partner. Pets After Dark will donate a portion of every subscription to HARP in support of the amazing work they do. By lending our services to HARP, we hope we can play a small role in their very lofty goal of keeping the underserved pets of Pittsburgh healthy and happy! We are super excited about this partnership and hope you will join us in supporting their mission. Tomorrow we will be posting a great blog entry written by Amy Rose, Dr. Kal, the Senior Medical Director of Medical Services at HARP.

(L-R) Howard Swimmer, Pets After Dark Co-Founder & CEO; Dr. Caroline Simard-Swimmer, DVM, Pets After Dark Co-Founder & Medical Director; Ariella Samson, Executive Director, HARP; Brianna Kaufman, Assistant Director of Medical Services, HARP; Camille Hubert, Veterinary Services Manager, HARP

Pets After Dark is a breakthrough solution to after-hours veterinary care

26/05/2024

Pet friends! This holiday weekend, let us help you keep your pets healthy and safe so you and your family can enjoy the weekend. Don’t forget, Pets After Dark offers Single Consultations for pet owners not yet subscribed and in need of veterinary advice. It’s super easy to connect to a local veterinarian in minutes. Click below for easy and quick access. And have a great holiday!

Single consultation [DRAFT]