Lloydminster Animal Hospital officially opened the doors on its new west-side clinic this week, capping a project staff say has been years in the making. Staff believe it’s now the only combined equine, bovine and small-animal clinic under one roof in western Canada.
The 15,000-square-foot building replaces the hospital’s longtime home at 6002 50 Avenue, a space veterinarian Dr. Corin Berg says simply couldn’t keep up anymore.
“Our old building was just too small, we couldn’t handle the workload,” Berg said. “It was frustrating for us, I think it was frustrating for owners.”
More than three dozen staff now work out of the new clinic, which was designed not for today’s caseload, but for the next decade or more.
“The idea was not to plan for what we need today, but what we need for 10 to 15 years down the road as well,” Berg said.
Before construction began, two of the practice’s veterinarians, Dr. Wennenkamp and Dr. Newman, traveled to Edmonton to tour referral centres. That research shaped one of the building’s signature spaces, which staff call “the Fishbowl.”
“We came back with a lot of good ideas out of that,” Berg said. The team worked with a design firm that specializes in veterinary clinics, he added, and the combined-species layout was a first for the firm.
“They’re more used to just designing either a large animal facility or a small animal facility, but not necessarily something that’s all under one roof,” Berg said.
Much of the clinic’s layout centres on reducing stress for patients and the people who bring them in. Dogs and cats are kept separate throughout the building, right down to their outdoor runs. Small dogs and big dogs each have their own potty area, apart from one another.
Traffic flows in a one-way loop through the building, extending even to cattle. Walking through, the layout reads like a circuit: animals come in, move through in a loop, and leave without doubling back through the same space.
“Traffic flow is great,” Berg said. “We had bottlenecks in our old facility. You’ve got to try to fit it all in on one level, so sometimes you’re going to have to walk a little further than maybe would have been ideal.”
Cattle now come off trailers and move through corrals into one of two dedicated spaces. One is built for cows. The other is more heavily reinforced, for bulls.
On the equine side, the hospital built a 100-foot indoor walkway so horses can be walked for lameness exams. A circular fenced area outside serves the same purpose.
One of the more striking design choices sits in the equine recovery room, padded wall to wall in blue.
“Horses don’t necessarily have the easiest wake-ups,” Berg said. “They can crush people who are in there.”
The padding is meant to limit the damage a horse can do to itself, or to staff, while coming out of anesthesia. The hospital does not perform abdominal surgery.
The new vet clinic also includes a dedicated room for euthanasia, with its own private door to the parking lot. It’s a deliberate choice, meant to spare grieving pet owners a walk back through a busy waiting room after losing a pet.
Berg said the added space has already changed day-to-day operations. The practice was routinely fully booked in the old building, with clients waiting on delayed exams. That backlog is gone, he said.
The same is true on the equine side, where demand draws clients from roughly a 60-mile radius.
Location mattered as much as square footage. The hospital passed on other available buildings that were structurally sound but poorly situated, Berg said, in favour of a site with highway access and no risk of future neighbours. The property backs onto railway tracks to the north.
“This location suited us very well,” Berg said. “It’s close to the highway. It works really, really nicely.”
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