Made in Vienna: The Hope Center

Marshmallow was an eight-week-old toy chihuahua that weighed less than one pound when his owners brought him home.

Less than one week later they noticed that he was recumbent, spending entire days laying on his side and not responding to anyone or anything. The owners took Marshmallow to their local veterinarian where they discovered Marshmallow was hypoglycemic, meaning his blood sugar was too low.

But the puppy needed overnight care and close attention throughout the day, neither of which the vet could provide.

Marshmallow’s vet did recommend the owners take their puppy to the Hope Center in Vienna, where he was fed a high-calorie diet from a syringe that sprayed into his mouth; his blood sugar was checked six times per day. And a couple days later, the puppy began showing signs of playfulness and soon after was ready to return home.

The Hope Center answers calls like Marshmallow’s every day, providing hospital care for animals that a traditional veterinarian’s office cannot.

The Hope Center is a 24-hour, full-service animal hospital that cares primarily for dogs and cats, but the hospital’s seven departments have taken in a wide range of animals, from household pets to injured animals from the wild, with an even wider variety of health issues.

Because the Hope Center never closes, it is able to care for animals on nights, weekends and holidays when other offices close their doors.

“On the overnights, we’ll see anywhere from eight to 16 patients during that shift,” Dr. Scott Moore of the emergency department said. “And on holidays it can be pretty busy. We can have anywhere from 25 to 30 patients in the hospital.”

The animal hospital wasn’t always open around the clock, said Brian Wilson, spokesman for the Hope Center: it began as an after-hours clinic to care for pets facing medical emergencies when local vets were closed for the day. It became a 24-hour hospital 2002, and moved to Park Street in Vienna in 2008.

The center features seven departments (internal medicine, oncology (cancer treatment), ophthalmology (eye care), cardiology (including surgery), neurology and rehabilitation), which lets vets better handle specific needs of the pets that visit.

The hospital also has a 24-hour emergency room that accepts walk-ins when medical issues arise without warning. The doctors in the emergency room will try to stabilize the animal before sending the animal to a specific department or back to its local vet for aftercare.

The Hope Center is a specialty and referral hospital, meaning many of its patients are sent to the hospital by their primary veterinarians to receive very particular care: Because the Hope Center has in-house laboratories, the hospital is able to conduct tests other veterinarians cannot and get results in a fraction of the time. Most of the Hope Center's machines are digital, which saves time, reduces the chance of an error, and compiles information and results for future reference by staff.

But as most of the Hope Center’s staff will tell you, it’s the teamwork throughout the hospital that makes it as efficient and effective in treating local pets as it is.