Hitting the road to take care of community’s furry friends

Rachel Sankey

Staff

September 2, 2024

CENTRAL WISCONSIN – Dr. Sandra Pumper said starting a mobile pet care unit with her partner, Garrett Frodl, was something of a match made in heaven.

“Growing up, I always knew that I wanted to own a practice at some point – I’ve wanted to be a veterinarian since about fourth grade,” she said. 

Frodl, she said, always knew he wanted to work with pets in some way, shape or form. 

“Growing up, he was part of 4H and was really active in showing dogs through his 4H club,” she said. “He just didn’t really have an opportunity to do that when he got out of school because – as you can imagine – going to vet school is very expensive.”

Instead, Pumper said Frodl became a diesel mechanic – a profession he was in for about a decade. 

Pumper said little did he know it would eventually bring him back to working with animals. 

When the two started to discuss starting their own business, Frodl’s experience as a mechanic, she said, is how they landed on a mobile care unit, instead of a brick-and-mortar.

“We ended up on the mobile piece because he had all the history and training of managing vehicles,” she said. “And then, the things we didn’t know for converting the RV, we learned along the way.”

By April 2023, Pumper said Rolling Paws Pet Care LLC began its journey of making a “pawsitive” impact in the Central Wisconsin area – with her as veterinarian and owner, and Frodl as maintenance manager and veterinary assistant.

The wheels started turning

The summary of how Rolling Paws Pet Care got started, Pumper said, may seem simple – deciding to start a practice, acquire an RV and start traveling to treat the area’s furry friends.

The reality, however, she said, was far more complicated – from RV renovations to the administrative side.

“When we decided we wanted to (start Rolling Paws), it took us about a year and a half (to get things going),” she said. “It took about a year to convert our RV, and then it took another half a year to create the administrative side of things. (To) go through our inventory, set up our pin software – that’s the software that we use for doing all of our paperwork and medical records – and then build our website from scratch – it was a lot of work.”

Pumper said she and Frodl bought the RV – a 2022 Thor Coleman – in January of 2022, but it took a bit longer to convert the RV than they expected, with some supplies hard to get due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Something as simple as getting two by fours, we sometimes had to wait a while for them to get in,” she said. “That made it a little bit longer.”

When it came to renovating the RV, Pumper said “long story short, we basically gutted the whole inside.”

“It was ready for recreational activities,” she said. “It had a bed, it had a dinette with a couple of sets of seating, a pullout couch/bed combo, a sink and a stove – all those sorts of things. We gutted all of that out. The main things that stayed were the cupboards that were mounted on the side walls, the refrigerator and freezer and then… we kept one of the couches in there for seating for clients when they come in.”

Some of the renovation projects, Pumper said, included:

• Redoing the floor
• Redoing the countertops so they would double as an exam table
• Moving the sink
• Cutting part of the wall to create two rooms in the back half of the RV
• Building a wall between the cab and where people walk in and installing a sliding door – “so we don’t have a cat or a little dog up and under the pedals where you drive.”
• Rewiring the electric
• Redoing the plumbing to make it temperature controlled and all seasons

“We converted just about everything you could in there,” she said. “It really wouldn’t have been possible without Garrett, because he had so much experience in the mechanic world – he’s particularly really strong in electronics, so learning how to rewire things was completely in his wheelhouse.”

When it came to licensing and regulations for the mobile pet care unit, Pumper said it’s pretty much the same as opening a brick-and-mortar practice. 

“So, it needs to be owned by either a veterinarian or a certified veterinary technician,” she said. “And to get either of those licenses, you have to go through a pretty long process… We’re regulated by OSHA, just like any other practice for quality control as well as safety standards – that sort of thing.”

Because of the weight of the vehicle – “and the fact that we don’t have anything that could be considered dangerous if you got in an accident, like compressed gas” – Pumper said she and Frodl do not need a CDL (commercial driver’s license) to drive the RV.

“But, we do need a DOT (department of transportation) number on it, so we have that registered with the DOT,” she said. “If we decided that we wanted to add surgery, for example, and be mobile with that because it takes compressed gas to do anesthesia and surgery, the person driving (the RV) would very likely need a CDL for that.”

Pumper said she also has a DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) license – “and that’s for any veterinarian or anybody that can legally prescribe medication for treating things.”

‘Cruising to a healthier pet’

As of right now, Pumper said Rolling Paws only sees cats and dogs – but offers a good variety of services for the furry friends.

She said said she focuses on wellness preventative care and non-emergency, sick patients, which means treating issues such as:

• Vomiting
• Diarrhea
• Allergies
• Ear infections

Essentially, Pumper said she treats issues that don’t need emergency care, but urgent care.

Pet parents looking to utilize the mobile pet care services, Pumper said, can get ahold of Rolling Paws three different ways – via call, email or the website (rollingpawspetcare.com).

“Most of the time, Garrett will give them a call back,” she said. “If they’re super busy and that doesn’t work for them, email and text work just as well. Basically, we get all the information we need and make sure it’s something we can help with. We schedule appointments, and then at the time of the appointment, we drive out there and do our thing.”

Rolling Paws’ service area currently covers Marathon, Merril, Mosinee, Rib Mountain, Rothschild, Stratford, Stevens Point, Wausau and Weston.

Strong Central WI support

Since starting Rolling Paws Pet Care, Pumper said the response from the community has been “overwhelmingly supportive.”

“People have absolutely loved our idea,” she said. 

Very quickly, Pumper said Rolling Paws “blew up, if you will.”

“So, we have an office in Mosinee right now, but we also used to have an office in Kronenwetter,” she said. “(There’s) a Facebook page called Kronenwetter Discussions. It was a pretty dead page, so we weren’t really expecting what happened to happen, but the township recommended posting on the page to introduce who we are, what we do.”

Initially, Pumper said the post had two likes – one from her personal page, and one from Frodl’s.

Just a few days later, she said the post gained more than 1,400 likes. 

“And the local news channel contacted us first thing Monday morning, wanting to do an in-person interview, so we did that,” she said. “The township did an interview that same day (as well).”

Throughout the first several weeks of business, Pumper said they received a couple hundred inquiries each week.

“It was pretty overwhelming, but everyone was super excited, super supportive,” she said. “When we go to appointments, people are so thankful that we do what we do.”

Having a mobile pet care unit, she said, has allowed her to help various people and pets in the area because she can bring the care to them.

“Whether they’re disabled and it’s hard to find someone to drive them and their pet there, or people that have senior dogs and can’t get them in the car anymore, or they’re not physically able to lift them to get them somewhere – we’ve helped a lot of people like that,” she said. 

Pumper said Rolling Paws has also been able to help a lot of anxious pets, too.

“If they don’t do well driving in a car, or if they don’t do well around other people or animals, I’ve been able to give a lot of those anxious pets care that they likely wouldn’t have had otherwise,” she said.

Pumper said Rolling Paws is pretty much able to go anywhere within their service area – whether it’s a single-family home or an apartment complex.

“I’d say most of our appointments are done in the RV, but… say it’s a cat that you put them in the carrier and then you can’t touch them after that, we’ve (treated) them in the home,” she said. “We’ve also done things like (where) senior, geriatric dogs that don’t have the mobility to do the stairs to get into the RV – I can (treat) them outside, in the backyard or the driveway.”

At-home euthanasia, Pumper said, has also become a leading service for Rolling Paws, as she said there is only one other veterinarian that offers it. 

As of right now, Pumper said Rolling Paws is the only mobile pet care RV of its kind in the region.

Future plans

Pumper said currently, Rolling Paws Pet Care is run solely by her and Frodl – but the plan is to hire a full-time office manager soon. 

She said they are also looking at expanding – “potentially adding another route, getting another doctor/assistant team.”

Pumper said when she and Frodl wrote up the business plan, they were projecting to expand in about five years, but due to their success and lack of vets in the region, they’re having those conversations much sooner. 

“(There’s a) shortage of veterinarians, you can go to any area and there’s a shortage and not enough of us,” she said. “When we started, it was even worse around here than I thought. We were one of the only clinics that was accepting new patients.”

As they continue to look to the future of Rolling Paws Pet Care, Pumper said they’re “honored to be a part of the community.”

“Everyone has been really lovely around here,” she said. “We’re glad that we ended up here.”