Kathryn Carlson launched her veterinary practice in 1998 at Village Park Animal Hospital in La Quinta with 300 clients, “$5,000 and good credit.”

Carlson, who now has 5,500 active clients, began expanding her business into other pet care-related ventures in 2003, when she opened Paws & Reflect pet boutique in Old Town La Quinta.

She has since relocated the boutique to a building she purchased on Eisenhower Drive, just a block or so away. Her father, Ed Carlson, runs the store.

The building — which will eventually be renovated and where her veterinary practice will be relocated — also houses AquaPaws, a pet rehabilitation, therapy and weight control center for animals that she opened in 2005.

Question: Has the sluggish economy impacted your veterinary practice?

Answer: Our production figures are the same. We're holding steady from last year for the most part, on average. There are some changes in decisions clients make that are a little different than previous years. I'm noticing that it isn't just lower-income (people). I'm noticing that more middle- to upper-income people are watching their pennies. It hasn't affected the bottom line that much, but I notice that it happens.

Tell us a little bit about your other pet-related business ventures.

Paws & Reflect was my second business. It was purely for fun reasons and for my dad. I wanted my dad to do something in his retirement and he wanted to help me. We put the store together and he's worked it for me ever since.

It's parlayed into kind of medical because I refer people over there for treats, certain diets, certain vet-approved toys. The food and treats is big, though, because lots of dogs have allergies to certain food components. It's nice to have an in-house way to (direct) people toward the right food choices.

Aqua Paws is the rehabilitation part of the practice. It was started four years ago. I had recently bought this building (on Eisenhower Drive) because it's the future of Village Park. We've grown out of our building — we're busting at the seams. So it was a good way to bring the grooming into here for the time being and then we run another business out of here, rehab, which I've always wanted to do. So it kind of allowed us to spend our time planning the remodeling of the entire building.

Then I brought Paws & Reflect over here when the lease was up at Old Town. That was kind of a no-brainer to bring that over to where I already had a payment.

What are some of the challenges of juggling three businesses?

The biggest challenge is to let go. The biggest challenge is to avoid micro-management and to find the right person in the right spot.

Has it been difficult to find the right people to fill your staffing needs?

It's always a challenge, but I have found wonderful staff members that help make it easier. I have certain managers in place at the veterinarian clinic (and) my dad being here watching over things. We just promoted a new manager for Aqua Paws. She used to own her own pizza business. It's a different business but customer service is the same. She's really working hard to do excellent customer service. She's spearheading this new holistic grooming approach that we're going toward. We're morphing the grooming into something a little different. That's always been what I've been about. I want to offer something different, just like as a veterinarian, I offer veterinary medicine in a little different way. I want it to be personal, I want it to be effective and I want to enjoy doing it. I couldn't enjoy doing what I'm doing if I didn't do it the way I do it.

How competitive is the veterinary business in the valley?

There are definitely enough clients for everybody. I think clients will drift to the place that makes them more comfortable. They really should drift toward the place that they are able to effectively communicate with their veterinarian, because the ability to communicate what your pet's needs are, what your pet's clinical signs are, that's how you accurately diagnose. To me, the client is my team member. It's the veterinarian, it's the client and it's the pet.

Has it been difficult to control costs in this economic environment?

Costs are huge. Overhead costs in veterinary medicine are huge. That is what the clients don't understand.

A good percentage of the skilled staff make $15 to $20 or more per hour. The more skilled staff you have the happier your clients are because they're taking care of things better than unskilled staff.

Unlike a doctor that just has an office and refers all of his X-rays to the radiology department or to the radiologist, we have to spend money on X-ray equipment. We have to spend money to keep that equipment working. We have a lot of costs in surgery instruments. We have a lot of costs in computers. we're looking toward getting a new software system so that we can be more efficient. Price tag for that is $15,000. Yearly support for that is $2,200.

There are veterinarians that have less overhead. We used to be one of them. When I first opened in 1998 I had a lot less overhead, I didn't have some technology. I didn't have an ultrasound machine then. I have an ultrasound machine now. The ultrasound machine is $40,000.

So I have to price those ultrasound studies so that I can afford to pay for that equipment. Is that a negative thing? No it isn't, because the client that has the dog that has a tumor in its spleen and we need to take it out today and we do not want to refer that dog, we want an ultrasound of it. So I can be a better veterinarian. I can offer better services.

What's your feeling about pet insurance?

I love it. I love most parts about it. It doesn't always pencil out for the wellness stuff so I don't necessarily think it's for everybody. I think budget-minded clients need to at least get it for emergencies. It's usually $15 to $20 a month for the minimum policy. On our Web site we have a link to a Web site that goes over all the pet insurances and critiques them and says what the prices are.

What percentage of your clients have pet insurance?

We don't really track that right now, but we should.

It's definitely growing. If I'm guessing in any one day how many forms I fill out, maybe a half-dozen forms a day.

What's the timeline for renovation of your building?

We're hoping to break ground in the next six to nine months.

The unknown is, while we're doing construction we have to move the existing businesses away and we can't move it where the clinic is so we will be leasing space to move this for six to nine months.

If it does well there — let's say grooming and Paws & Reflect did really well in that location — I might keep part of it there. Rehab will come back to the clinic for sure and we will have a groomer at the clinic for sure, but if the boutique and some of our grooming services as a unit together do really well in another location I might just keep it in that location.

What is the future of veterinary care?

The future of veterinarian medicine in general is — and it already has leaned toward this — specialization.

I'm a general practitioner and I love being a generalist. I love being a generalist because I like doing a little bit of everything. I can do surgery if I want, I do internal medicine.

Not everybody has the funds to go off to specialty practice. Which means I have to be up on it and I get to learn it and I get to do it and that's fun. It's challenging.

But to the client that takes the “A” (medical care) plan, that wants to go off to the specialist with a very difficult case, I think veterinarian medicine is going to be where that needs to be done.

We need to encourage all veterinarians to have the ability to pass on specialty-type procedures: orthopedic surgery, oncology, neurology, internal medicine. So the future of veterinary medicine is that those subspecialties allow for more accurate diagnostics. Because that's all they do.

So as far as how does that affect my business, to the clients that want to do it I send that stuff out which means it's not money that stays in house. But it's the right thing to do. If you keep too much in-house that should be sent out house, what do you think your accuracy level is? How frequently could somebody misdiagnose something because they were not that encouraged to send somebody to the specialist.