Community Corner
House Calls, Injections and Nursing Care—for Pets
Kathleen Ashe has been expanding her in-home pet services business, L.A. Vet Tech, handling everything from vaccinating pets and walking dogs to full-on nursing care.
L.A. Pet Tech has been serving Studio City and North Hollywood for years now, but some local pet owners might not know about it. There are some services prescribed by your vet that can performed in the comfort of your home. That's where Kathleen Ashe comes in. Her company, LA Pet Tech, provides home care for pets.
She offers in-home pet services—from giving injections and dog walking to euthanasia service from start to finish. She's not in this for the money. She had the money, and headed instead toward her heart's real destination.
"This is my calling. I love people, I love animals, and I need to be of service," Ashe said.
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At 30 years of age, Ashe, a Melbourne, Australia, transplant, asked herself, "What do I really want to do?" (Working the high-paying job of production manager for commercial productions proved lucrative but spiritually and physically impoverishing.)
"I asked myself what it was I enjoyed during childhood," she said. "Out of that list came my new goal of learning to be a veterinarian technician."
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After years of on-the-job training, she began offering her skills to friends and friends of friends, giving injections, offering walks and administering medication and nursing care. About eight years ago, she had built up enough business to open L.A. Pet Tech, an in-your-home animal services company.
Many routine procedures aren't worth the commute time and crating hassles, when a qualified pet caregiver can handle everything in your own home.
Ashe's business operates seven days a week, serves the East Valley (as far west as Encino, and over the hill into Hollywood and West Hollywood), and performs a huge variety of services.
"Once people welcome you into their homes, you become part of those families," she said.
Ashe has had many of her clients for all eight years of her business.
"I have great clients, and I'm very lucky that way," she said.
Her dog, Ploopy, a mixed Chihuahua, is quite well known. Ploopy serves as the business head of an eBay business—GoPloopyGo—offering home-made dog collars and cat collars completely designed from recycled clothing and found objects.
Ploopy also stars in Ashe's radio dramas, offering genre pieces of fictionalized adventures for which she does some of the voices, and Ploopy offers the inspiration.
