INTERVIEW: Animal Planet’s ‘Vet Life’ follows three vets as they save animals

Days are busy for the dynamic veterinarian team of Dr. Diarra Blue, Dr. Aubrey Ross and Dr. Michael Lavigne. The trio are in business in the Houston area, operating both the Cy-Fair Animal Hospital and a rescue shelter. This keeps them working nonstop, but they always make time for their families. Now their professional and personal lives are the subject of the new Animal Planet reality series, The Vet Life, which premieres Saturday, June 4 at 10 p.m.

The team of doctors connected with the network after Blue’s sister, an alumna of Pawn Stars, pitched the series. “Animal Planet liked what they saw, and here we are,” Ross said recently in a phone interview. “The Vet Life was formed. … It was a different experience having someone follow you around your home, around your family, here at the clinic with the caseload that we have, but in all it was a good experience. I love it. It gets the audience to see our lives, how we practice veterinary medicine, how we take care of our families. We love our families. We love our wives. It was a good experience, and it’s something I thought was real fun.”

The doctors own a full-service veterinary hospital that specializes in small animals; however, they also see exotic animals and make ambulatory house calls to local farms. Being that horses and cows are unable to make the trip to the clinic, they take their veterinary care on the road. The other side of their professional lives is the management of an animal shelter, where they take in abandoned and lost animals.

“That is a real fulfillment for myself because what we’re doing is we’re helping the animals that can’t speak for themselves,” Ross said. “They have no owners. They’re in bad shape, and we get to provide veterinary medicine and try to find them a forever home.”

The trio first met in veterinarian school. Ross said he and Lavigne graduated together as classmates in 2007, and Blue graduated in 2009. “When we were in vet school, we always talked about owning our own practice,” Ross said.

The three doctors headed to Las Vegas and worked long hours for a clinic. Eventually they decided to branch out by themselves, so they made a pact to open their own animal hospital. Blue is from Detroit, and Lavigne is from New Orleans. Ross is originally from Houston, and that city was the one they chose to set up their operations.

“So we kind of talked about it, what areas would be the best areas for us to be successful, and we chose Houston,” Ross said. “So this has been going on I would say probably [since] 2006, for like 10 years. We’ve been knowing each other since 2003, and we’ve just kind of became really good friends. We love each other, and we decided to open up a hospital.”

On the shelter side of the business, the doctors see a lot of neglect cases. These animals come to them with common diseases that could be prevented if the animals received preventative care. From intestinal viruses to distemper heart worm disease, the ailments are numerous.

“All of these diseases that we see in the shelter could be prevented with proper vaccination protocol and also a good heart worm program,” Ross said. “So we definitely see a lot of that in the shelter, and we try to promote preventative care in our practice. So we would definitely reduce the amount of animals that’s coming into the shelter.”

For the reality series, with the cameras rolling in both their professional and personal lives, the doctors went about their busy careers and simply tried to be themselves. Ross said they remained genuine and authentic throughout the entire filming process.

The camera operators had a lot of material to work with because the animal hospital is open seven days a week, and the doctors routinely work schedules that run 12 to 13 to 14 hours per day. “Our wives complain about, oh my gosh, you’re never at home,” he said. “So a typical day, it starts at 7 and doesn’t end until roughly 8 or 9 at night, and that’s here at the hospital. The shelter, the same thing. We open at 8. We close at 5. Emergency animal control bring in different types of emergencies, hit by cars, neglect cases, and we can’t leave until the last patient is seen. So we’re here all the time. We’re working all the time, and then we try to spend that quality time with our families, with our kids, with our wives, to try and find that common balance.”

The future looks promising for the three doctors. Other than the reality series, which will surely put a spotlight on their facilities, they would like to make Cy-Fair Animal Hospital the first of many. “We would like to open up preventative care hospitals around the greater Houston area, maybe eventually [in] Detroit, move back to New Orleans, Louisiana, whenever we’re able to support that investment,” he said. “But 10 years we see ourselves opening up numbers of animal hospitals, reaching out to more shelters in the area to help the homeless and abandoned animals in Houston and Houston proper.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

The Vet Life premieres Saturday, June 4 at 10 p.m. on Animal Planet. Click here for more information.