We continue taking a look at the different aspects of a national veterinary shortage. Through the lens of offices in New York state, we see a shift in an urgent care facility nestled in the Finger Lakes and Central New York region.

Welcome to a shift at Urgent Veterinary Care in Auburn.

"We want your animal to do as well as you want it to do," said veterinary assistant and receptionist Jessica Malone, who says she hears complaints early and often from the office.

The clinic is trying to fill in the gaps where a national veterinary shortages are plaguing pet owners and their patience.

"We're saying no [to people] because we literally do not have open cages or enough doctors or enough staff," said technician assistant Kelly Delaney.

At the helm of the issue is Dr. Paula Ospina, who knows how we got here and opened up this location in nearly one year ago.

"COVID had everybody adopting a pet, which was great, because that means all of these pets would have not would have been either homeless or are euthanized," she said. "A lot of these guys came from the shelter and a lot of them high kill shelters."

But so many new pets and owners was never sustainable, outright, for almost anyone.

"It's hard to get into that even if you've been a long term client even if your dog is really sick. Even if you are good, a good client. It's just a matter of there's only so much time in the day and there's only so many people working and everybody that's working is working really really hard," said Ospina.

A full schedule of appointments and more on the way, our night was taken over by a dog coming in needing dire care for clustered seizures and if treatment wasn't hard enough on this team. Overnight observation was almost impossible to find.

"There's days we get hammered. The phone doesn't stop ringing. We can even catch our breath that beats us up you know we go home and it's heavy you know to take those cases home with us," Ospina added.

It's important to note that a historic shortage on veterinarians is only the tip of the iceberg. These small crews feel every bit of strain, vet tech Lisa Izzo.

"They would place IV catheters draw blood samples assist the doctor and surgical procedures do anesthesia monitoring blood pressures occasionally placed urinary catheters," said Lizzo.

Moonlighting at this emergency clinic she's seen the most critical impacts of this shortage at other operations.

"We've lost four doctors at the practice I work at in a year and then we've lost three licensed techs in like the past three months. I want to say it's nonstop disabled working; you're overworked, you're overwhelmed, you're underpaid," said Lizzo.

Assistant Emily Condon is originally from PA where she was able to do more under the title, but New York is more strict about who can do what in the clinical space. On top of that, she testifies as to how bad things like wear and tear has been on all veterinary staffs.

"So we had to keep rescheduling the lunch and learn about how we were all burnt out," she said. "Because we didn't have the time or the energy to have a discussion about why we didn't have time or energy."

Technician assistant Kelly Delaney is in school to become a full tech, citing passion over some of the things she's seen from the online classroom to the clinic waiting room.

"A lot of times people go into this field thinking 'I'm gonna work with pets. I'm not dealing with people,'" she said. "The people have the pets so you're going to deal with the people. You're seeing them on their worst day in their worst fears. So you're seeing the worst of them and you kind of have to take a step back, pause and be in their shoes a little bit."

Jessica Malone has a unique take as an assistant and receptionist coming from the dairy sciences field, challenged day in and day out.

"There's a lot of levels of emotions and things that you deal with the clientele here and I think that's probably been the biggest challenge for me. We're all pet owners here," Malone said. "I can tell you that I had my puppy hospitalized not that long ago. So I've been on both sides of it."

Crews like this will keep coming back into the clinic because their passion and teamwork outweigh a lot of the challenges, even as they are continuing to mount.

"Part of it's also what makes this industry so awesome when you work with animals like this the the amount of passion that you find in the people that work here is just unparalleled anywhere else," said Malone.

A busy night in that clinic and every day is turning into a scene like that across the nation.

The team there did want us to mention that while the shortage is making things difficult on practices and individuals, there are plenty of patient owners who do reach out expressing gratitude for the work that is being put in.