WAILUKU - Pet owners on the Pineapple Isle may soon have a place where they can take their sick dogs and kitties for care. The Lanai Veterinary Clinic is to open this spring.
Kelly Heiman said she and co-owner Shae Martin hope to open the new clinic in April, with veterinarians and technicians traveling to Lanai to provide services on Fridays. Martin is owner and Heiman is a veterinary technician at Central Maui Animal Clinic, which has been providing volunteer services for spay/neuter clinics on Lanai for about six years.
Plans for the clinic come a little more than six weeks after the island's longtime veterinarian, Nicholas Palumbo, was killed in a plane crash on Oahu.
For the past several years, Palumbo, a Honolulu veterinarian, had cared for the island's pets on his weekend visits to Lanai, while vets and technicians from Central Maui Animal Clinic had focused on caring for and controlling the feral cat population with spay/neuter clinics.
"It's always been in the back of our mind to try to help more, and with the passing of Dr. Palumbo we felt the residents and the animals really needed ongoing veterinary care," Heiman said.
The clinic is finalizing a lease with landowner Castle & Cooke Resorts for a location at 439 B 9th St. in Lanai City.
Lanai residents would be able to make their appointments through the Central Maui Animal Clinic's main offices in Kahului.
Heiman said she and other staffers would commute to Lanai once a week and would volunteer their time initially to help the clinic get started, but that eventually staff would be paid. She said she wanted to keep costs as low as possible but that the clinic would charge for services to cover medical supplies and make it a viable business for the long term.
"In order to keep our doors open, we have to charge," she said.
If there's enough demand, the clinic could expand to provide more days of service in the future, she added.
Vet technician Kathrin Gomez, who has been traveling to Lanai weekly to provide services since Palumbo's death and will help staff the new clinic, said care will be provided at "much lower cost than our Maui clinic."
"We wish we could offer free service," she said. "We just basically want to break even, but the cost will be very, very, very low."
She said working on Lanai has been rewarding.
"For us, it's being able to offer the community something they don't have, which is access to vet care," she said.
Most of the work she has done so far has been routine vaccinations, deworming, and flea and tick treatment, she said.
"We're seeing very well-cared-for pets," she said.
Kathy Carroll, a founder of the Lanai Animal Rescue Center, which provides a shelter to stray and ownerless cats, said the plan for a new veterinary clinic on the island was a godsend.
Many pet owners may now feel their only option is to bring an injured animal to Maui for care, she said. That's an involved trip by boat and rental car that can be expensive for the owner and hard on an already-suffering pet, she said.
The new clinic "would help a lot," she said.
"After doc passed away, even as we were grieving, so many people were asking, 'What can we do now?'" she said. "I think this will be a huge help to the community and to the animal center."
* Ilima Loomis can be reached at iloomis@mauinews.com.
