Expand<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dr. Jessica Sheruda-Ryan and her husband, Dr. Adam Ryan, launched Steamtown Veterinary to fill a void in the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe grew up in Lackawanna County, and we both ended up being veterinarians,\u201d Sheruda-Ryan said. \u201cWhen I moved back to the area and bought a house, I worked at another ER, and unfortunately we were sending clients down to my husband\u2019s clinic (Animal Care Center) in Danville just for affordable care. We were hoping to keep that local and saw an opportunity to try to provide more affordable local care \u2014\u00a0 that was always our goal. ER medicine is expensive. We\u2019re trying to be that middleman for people who can\u2019t afford to see the specialists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steamtown Veterinary \u2014 which employs about 43 people \u2014 experienced an immediate strong demand for services as the staff treated 80 animals in the first 24 hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never thought we would be that busy,\u201d Sheruda-Ryan said. \u201cThe volume was really unexpected. I think the community\u2019s really excited.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added the owners of several local veterinary practices expressed a desire to collaborate and offered support.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re super excited about creating a long-lasting partnership where there\u2019s great communication and affordability for owners, so they aren\u2019t fretting about where they\u2019re sending their patients,\u201d Sheruda-Ryan said. \u201cSo many local vets toured the facility or donated food or a gift card. Another local vet clinic gave us some old exam tables we can utilize for a procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n
While emergency care remains expensive, Sheruda-Ryan feels Steamtown Veterinary has a sustainable business model.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince we\u2019re privately owned, we don\u2019t have all the levels of supervision you\u2019re paying for in terms of a hospital manager, and that type of thing, which keeps prices a little bit more affordable,\u201d she said. \u201cMy husband is continuing his full-time job at his clinic and he\u2019s working full time here every weekend. I\u2019m working seven days a week on overnights.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re focusing on communicating with the client and making everything transparent. Our focus has always been trying to provide an alternative option for owners. We\u2019re not boarded, we\u2019re not specialists, so you\u2019re not paying specialist prices, but we\u2019re still willing to try to do certain care. I think of it as old-school medicine. Twenty years ago, you didn\u2019t go anywhere else. Your vet tried it or it didn\u2019t work. For the owners that can\u2019t afford a specialist, we\u2019re willing to take on some of those more complex cases. We don\u2019t have all the bells and whistles like a CT or MRI but I would say we\u2019re fairly advanced for a local ER.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sheruda-Ryan stressed time is of the essence when pets are experiencing distress and that the facility will expedite treatment of the most serious ailments.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrauma and respiratory cases take priority in terms of having minimal wait times of being seen,\u201d she said. \u201cThat can make a huge difference in a pet\u2019s life or the prognosis and outcome for that pet. We\u2019re trying to help ease urgent care cases. We realize most general practices are booked out for several weeks. Our urgent care side won\u2019t get started for another month or so, until we kind of work out the kinks of the system and get our team all working together where we can start branching out, but we hope to offer it at least two days a week.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the facility currently accommodates dogs and cats, the owners have experience treating farm animals and have already received requests from the community regarding exotic pets.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up on a farm, and (my husband\u2019s) been dating me since we were in high school, so he basically grew up on a farm, too,\u201d Sheruda-Ryan said. \u201cWe\u2019re seasoned with lambs, pigs, sheep and goats, but we have very limited exotic handling. We hope we\u2019ll be able to expand upon that as our staff becomes more trained. Some of the local exotic rescuers have reached out in terms of training our staff for handling exotics. It\u2019s very difficult to offer exotic service if your staff is not capable of adequately restraining them or handling them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carol Riegel Motsko of Maine, New York, visited the new clinic Saturday when none of the veterinarians in Broome County were open for emergency care and she faced a multiple-hour wait time at emergency centers in New York when her 1\u00bd-year-old golden retriever, Rylee, woke up and had trouble walking.<\/p>\n
\u201cI needed to find emergency care, and thankfully my daughter had just found out through Facebook that Steamtown was opening,\u201d she said. \u201cThey said bring her right down, and the doctors were very professional and compassionate. They were very organized for it being their first day open. They got us into a room pretty quickly, and quickly assessed what was wrong, which was the onset of Lyme disease. We were very impressed and pleased with the care.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new Steamtown Veterinary Center is expected to provide peace of mind for pet owners in Northeast Pennsylvania…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[60,2136,201,182,28,3138,178,180,179,289,181],"class_list":["post-272113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-business","tag-dunmore","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pets-and-animals","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-things-to-do","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Archbald](\"https:\/\/www.thetimes-tribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/STT-L-VETERINARY-0826.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n