The Murieta Pet Hospital is already accepting appointments for its opening day on Monday, Oct. 14. The new business is located at Oakville Lane and Murieta Drive.

RANCHO MURIETA, CA (MPG) - Following three years of delays, the long-anticipated Murieta Pet Hospital is expected to open on Monday, Oct. 14. It is located on Oakville Lane south of Jackson Highway.

Dr. Tyler Baum, one of three partners, has already begun booking appointments for what he is describing as a soft opening.

“Barring any crazy, unforeseen complications, our contractor has given us pretty good assurances that we would be open and operational on the 14th,” he said.

Baum said it was exciting to finally open the 4,500-square-foot hospital.

“It’s been a stressful time for all of us, including the community, with everyone wanting us to open and us wanting the same thing,” he said. “We are looking forward to making what is been a consistent dream for the past three years into an actual reality.”

A grand opening for the pet hospital has been slated for Saturday, Nov. 16.

Baum said they will initially staff the hospital with one full-time and two part-time veterinarians and with 10 to 11 support staffers mostly hired from the surrounding area.

Although the hospital will only operate on weekdays at the outset, the partners hope to grow the practice as quickly as possible with expanded hours, emergency care, overnight hospitalizations and even large animal services.

Ideally, three to four veterinarians will eventually staff the Rancho Murieta clinic.

“Just as long as the community support is there, we will be able to expand our services,” Baum said

The hospital has two fully functional operating rooms for procedures all the way from soft tissue to orthopedics to spaying services and dental cleanings. An in-house lab will supply clients with answers within minutes. The practice also partners with a Sacramento lab that provides quick turnaround times for tests that can’t be handled in-house. The hospital equipment will include full digital X-ray machines and ultrasound.

The hospital’s starting point will be treating companion animals, dogs, cats, birds, and exotics like rabbits, reptiles and Guinea pigs. The hospital’s first full-time veterinarian will be Dr. Pietro Catini, who actually began his career in the cattle industry in Visalia. He currently works with small animals at Broadway Veterinary Hospital in Sacramento.

“He is very excited about the possibility of running a mobile, large-animal service once we get off the ground and our initial clinic running,” Baum said. “We may also have the ability to do some large animals on site, but that is down the line.”

Baum said that he and Dr. Audrey Atchley will initially fill in as part-time veterinarians in Rancho Murieta. The partnership also operates Broadway Veterinary Hospital in Sacramento and the Venetian Pet Hospital in Stockton.

“One of the things we strive to do at our other clinics is not to let anyone be a number on a page but to have personalized and very individualized care for all of our animals,” Baum said.

Initially expecting to open a year ago, Baum said the project delays had been very frustrating and out of their control.

They began after the partnership filed a design review application with Sacramento County in November 2021. “It took almost a year to get our permits because of COVID,” he said.

However, the biggest issue was securing a switch gear, which is the piece that connects the building to the power grid.

“According to our contractor, there are only two places that make them in the world, and because of COVID and production issues we got a massive backorder,” he said. “A piece that was supposed to take two to three months to get here ended up taking a year and a half.”

Even after the switch arrived in May, the building couldn’t be connected to the grid until late September because of  repeated delays by SMUD, which also is experiencing backlogs.

“Now we are in a mad dash to get all our final permitting done so we can open in mid-October and start servicing the Rancho Murieta Community,” Baum told the River Valley Times in an Oct. 1 interview.