Anchor Animal Hospital celebrates 50 years of paw-sitive care

Fifty years ago, recent University of Pennsylvania veterinary school graduates Joe Pietsch and Larry Shinnamon were looking for a place to establish a clinic of their own.

After looking around for a location that was in need of a practice, they settled on Dartmouth, where their business, Anchor Animal Hospital, has been ever since.

“It was a nice combination,” Pietsch said. “We kind of bounced things off each other. That was really nice — it gave us a special strike.”

At that time there had been few veterinary clinics in the area, with the majority of them being single doctor practitioners that focused mainly on farm medicine. There was also no large hospital in the community that could do overnight care or more advanced medicine.

“They looked at the South Coast, and they said, ‘There isn’t anybody in this area, in the Dartmouth-Westport area,’ and so they started the practice here, and we’ve been here ever since,” said Kate Pietsch, who bought the clinic from her dad nearly 15 years ago and has a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from Tufts University.

Pietsch said the practice and veterinary field have “changed dramatically” since he and Shinnamon, who now lives in Norwood, Massachusetts opened the hospital in 1975, with new types of antibiotics, anesthetics and equipment now available.

“I’ve been retired for five years, and it’s so different,” he said. “I wouldn’t even attempt to come in the practice because it’s all so different.”

Anchor Animal Hospital offers a variety of services for cats, dogs and small mammals, including guinea pigs and rabbits. This includes acupuncture, abdominal ultrasounds and echocardiograms, dental work, pain management, senior care and surgical procedures.

“As we continue to grow, we hope to bring more services in. We want to continue to develop those services,” Kate said.

Besides technological advancements in the field as a whole, Anchor Animal Hospital has evolved in its own right.

Kate said that when her dad and Shinnamon first opened the practice, they would have to come in in the middle of the night for emergency care. With the rise of emergency clinics, this is no longer necessary.

The hospital also started using ultrasound in the 80s and recently upgraded their system to be able to communicate with a cardiologist in real time, allowing a cardiologist to give their professional opinion while the procedure is still being conducted.

“So much is changing so quickly, which is wonderful. We have so many new things that we can do that we couldn’t do before,” Kate said.

Anchor Animal Hospital is now one of the few remaining independently and family-owned practices in the country that isn’t owned by a large corporation, according to Kate.

“When I purchased the practice from my dad, it really felt great to have that legacy of the family continuing on,” she said.

She explained that when she first started working at the hospital in high school, her brother also worked at the practice. Now, her sister works at the clinic and her husband helps out, and up until five years ago, so did her dad.

Kate said that celebrating 50 years as an independently owned family practice feels “really great,” noting that she was raised in Dartmouth and has been part of the community for her whole life.

“Having a practice, it really means something, and it’s amazing today as I see people come by, people who maybe don’t have pets with us anymore, but they just want to come in and say hi,” she said.

This includes clients Kate met when she started working at the clinic as a technician in high school.

“I still see them to this day, and maybe I’m even seeing their children,” she said.