07/23/2026
Hello everyone. I’m Dr. Mark Meier, owner of Hays Veterinary Hospital.
First, I want to address a post I saw tonight in the Hays Area Pets Lost and Found group. I am truly sorry to hear a beloved pet was in such distress, and I am hopeful you were able to secure an appointment with our colleagues at Hillside. Having a sick pet is stressful, and I completely understand the panic you felt.
I am addressing this publicly because it is crucial for our community to understand the reality of veterinary medicine right now.
To the commenter who brought up my mentor, Dr. Steve Mosier: I completely agree with you. Dr. Mosier was an incredible veterinarian, and he took great pride in serving the community, the families, and their pets. I had the privilege of working alongside him for 18 years, and the professional principles and commitment to community service he instilled in me remain the absolute foundation of this hospital. However, the landscape of veterinary medicine is vastly different today than it was before his retirement.
Our region is facing a veterinary shortage. It has since before he retired. With our current associate Dr. Emily Pivonka blessed with a new addition to her family, we are operating as a solo doctor practice. Dr. Katrin Kolder supports us two days a week, and thanks to our incredible team of three licensed nurses and our excellent support staff, we are pushing ourselves to see 30 to 40 patients a day over the past few weeks.
On top of my own daily caseload, we provide the community a walk-in service on Saturdays, as well as an after hours on-call emergency service. On my one day off, I have a responsibility to my faith, to be a husband to my wife, Caroline, and a father to our four young kids—who are just 6, 5, 2, and 8 months old.
Over the past few weeks, our front office staff has worked tirelessly under immense pressure. When they enforce our triage protocols and inform callers that we cannot take on new clients for emergencies, they are doing exactly what I have directed them to do. It is a brutal, heartbreaking choice, but it is a physical necessity for our team.
If we attempt to squeeze in every emergency in the area, we compromise the safety and standard of care for the dozens of critically ill and scheduled patients we are already treating that day. We have to draw a hard line to protect the care of the patients who already rely on us.
This access to care is a crisis, and the consequences are devastating. Just last week, a traveler further out west desperately needed a veterinarian to perform a humane euthanasia. They could not find anyone available, and their pet sadly passed away in their car before they reached Hays Veterinary Hospital. It absolutely breaks my heart. We do this job out of a deep dedication to serving this community, these families, and these pets, but we have a finite physical capacity.
If we want a real solution to this problem, we need to address the root cause. We need to change the admission standards at Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine.
I have been advocating for western Kansas veterinarians since I graduated 12 years ago. Frankly, the KSU College of Veterinary Medicine does not do a good job of admitting Western Kansas residents.
Ironically, a large percentage of our western Kansas veterinarians were forced to go out of state after applying multiple times to KSU, incurring massive amounts of debt, just to be able to come back and serve our area. Others, including myself, choose to move back without the $25,000 per year incentive provided by the Veterinary Training Program for Rural Kansas (VTPRK). We come back to be close to family and community values. Belief in family and community is the backbone of the region.
When pressed for better representation, I get a disconnected response from the prior Dean of KSU CVM that we need to encourage urban kids to embrace the rural lifestyle, the Summer Program for Aspiring Rural Kansas veterinarians (SPARK program). Why? How many urban applicants are inspired watching some of the area veterinarians work 50-60 plus hours per week in addition to being on-call 24/7. Maybe if western Kansas had more breathing room that program could be successful.
If this region wants to see a change in access to veterinary care, I strongly encourage everyone in western Kansas to start reaching out to Kansas State University and our state representatives to demand better admission representation for our region.
We care deeply about your pets, and we are pushing ourselves to our absolute limits to provide the best care possible. Thank you for understanding the immense pressure all of your local veterinary teams are currently facing.
