According to Forbes, 66% of U.S. households own at least one pet, and more than half of New Yorkers spend more money on their dogs than themselves.

Most of that money is spent in veterinary medicine, an industry that is strained.

There may, however, be a light at at the end of the tunnel. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, the demand for veterinary services is adjusting since the pandemic. The AVMA says more graduates from veterinarian colleges will meet the demands into 2035.

One vet says that there is, though, a gap in care for farm animals.

“Some of the rural counties, we definitely are having some pretty severe shortages, especially in large animal medicine, and there’s a lot of contributing factors to that," says Dr. Jamie Lovejoy, associate veterinarian at Stack Animal Hospital. "And the AVMA is working on trying to encourage people to be able to live in these areas and work in those industries, because food animal medicine and large animal medicine is so important to human health and productivity, and especially in upstate New York, [are] our lifeblood.”

For small animal practices, there are still care concerns. 

“It’s a very big shift [in] how medicine works these days that makes this feel like a shortage," Lovejoy said. "Medicine is so much more intense than it used to be in the 'all creatures great and small' days. We are doing a lot more diagnostics. We are really a lot more involved in our patients' lives and in the medicine that they need, and so it means that what our daily job is is so much more intense, we need more time to do it."

She says animal urgent cares and emergency rooms help with managing some of these issues.