If you or someone you know has an emergency, you call 9-1-1. But in Lake Havasu City, there isn’t a 24-hour emergency center for your pets.

Nathan Bruttell/News-Herald Photo Veterinary Technician Keith Roberts and Dr. Laura Lange give Raven, a Doberman, a checkup at Lange Veterinary Center. Lake Havasu City veterinarians and animal officials say it’s a good idea to establish a relationship with your local center and ask what to do in the event of an emergency before one occurs.

With several Lake Havasu City veterinarians reporting upwards of 20 after-hours emergency calls every week, local officials agree that pet owners should take extra precautions to be prepared in the event of an emergency. While having the emergency number for your veterinarian is strongly suggested, local veterinarians say there are several other steps that should be taken well ahead of any emergency.

“Just like you should have a relationship with your doctor, people with pets should have a relationship with their veterinarian,” said Keith Roberts, veterinary technician for Lange Veterinary Center. “If you don’t have that relationship and you’re talking to someone over the phone about a concern, it makes it that much harder.”

Having a strong relationship can mean the difference between a late night visit to your local veterinary center or solving the problem yourself at home, says Hermosa Veterinary Center Owner Lori Kurth.

“Most of the time, a lot of emergencies can be warded off until morning,” Kurth said. “Sometimes a technician can talk the pet owner into wrapping lacerations properly or giving them the correct amount of medicine.”

Kurth said owners should never attempt to diagnose their own pets in an emergency.

“Some animals can take a small dosage of aspirin if they’re in a lot of pain, but your vet will have that specific information,” she said. “But something like Tylenol or any other drug that isn’t aspirin or one specifically prescribed, can cause severe problems and possibly kill the pet.”

Once a relationship is established, local veterinarians recommend asking your specific center what to do in the case of an emergency. All of the facilities have an after-hours phone number and will respond to emergency calls late at night, but it’s also important to ask for payment policies, local officials say.

“The tough one is always the money issue,” Roberts said. “It’s tough for us and it’s tough for them. It can be a really touchy subject, and it’s something you need to talk to with your veterinarian because every center is different.”

Each center in Lake Havasu City establishes its own fees, ranging anywhere from $100 to $750 for emergency calls. Some facilities, like Hermosa, accept cash, payment plans, personal checks and credit cards. Other facilities, like Lange Veterinary Center, only accept cash or credit cards. Others can require cash only in the event of an emergency. However, if a relationship is established, Roberts said Lange and other centers do make exceptions for well-known pet owners with history.

“If you’re not known to us, it’s a pay-as-you-go service,” Roberts said. “But we have made exceptions. I wish I could tell you how many people have promised us payments and never paid.”

When the facility first opened about 13 years ago, Lange used to accept all emergency calls without payment. But the policy quickly changed, Roberts said, when they realized the facility could go broke with all of the extra work they were doing for free.

“We spent nearly 12 hours taking care of one dog on Thanksgiving Day when we first opened,” Roberts said. “We still haven’t been paid, and that was 13 years ago.”

Kurth said she and her husband, who also have a clinic in Denver, said they also accepted all calls without payment upfront when first starting out.

“If we didn’t charge and went ahead and billed it, we’d see only about 10 percent of people billed actually pay,” Kurth said. “We had unpaid bills owed to us that added up to the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of four years. We finally said we’re done with it.”

But Kurth said, while they don’t do work for free, they can make many exceptions.

“Most of the people who’ve had problems, we get it working with payment plans and we’ve had pretty good success,” Kurth said. “We’re pretty lenient actually. But typically most places will not do anything unless they receive payment upfront.”

Local veterinarians say it’s also not a bad idea to know if your veterinarian will be on-call as Lange, Havasu Veterinary Center, Paws and Claws and McGuire Veterinary Services use a rotation schedule for on-call appointments. Otherwise, all veterinary centers in Lake Havasu City handle their own emergency calls.

“What I tell people is, put $20 a month in a checking account. Just like any emergency that would happen to you or your kids, you want to have money set aside for emergencies for your pet,” Roberts said. “I would have somewhere around $300 to $500 for an emergency, or even an extra credit card specifically for your pet.”

Roberts added that the last thing a veterinarian wants to do is tell someone they can’t help because of money concerns.

“We sit up all night worried about pets if people can’t come in,” Roberts said. “It really does weigh on us too. It would be nice to live in the kind of world we could do this for free, but that’s not the world we live in.”

Cowper said pet owners are sometimes quick to blame veterinarians for not doing the work pro bono, but there are two sides to the coin.

“They can’t just do the work for free and they have a right to have their own policies,” Cowper said. “That’s why you need to ask these questions, so you know what you’re going to be asked to pay in the event of an emergency. The important thing is to have a good, collaborative relationship with the veterinarian and the pet owner.”

Calls to some local veterinary centers seeking comment on this story were not returned.

You may contact the reporter at nbruttell@havasunews.com