Animal Urgent Care (AUC)
About Us
Our Facilities
We strive to make our facility comfortable for both you and your pet. While we have some of the latest technology and equipment, we have done our best to create an environment that minimizes the stress that our patients feel, as many are already undergoing a lot by the time they are brought to our hospital. This helps return them to your home sooner, and ultimately in a healthier and happier state.
Our Team
Our veterinarians are trained to make your pets’ health and safety our top priority. Our expertise allows us to treat your pet with the love and care we give our own, and we will work our hardest to send them home happy and healthy.
Our History
Animal Urgent Care was started by Dr. Liz O’Rourke in 2007, after recognizing a need for affordable emergency care for cats and dogs in the Arvada area. Liz opened the doors of AUC in a historic building on Indiana Street with the help of her family and a few dedicated team members. As the practice grew, Liz maintained a sense of family in a way that many emergency hospitals struggle with, a value that remains at our practice today. As we blossomed and became valued within the community, the demand for care at AUC pushed us to find a larger space for our patients and team. In December of 2018, we moved to a new hospital on the corner of 64th and Ward Road. Liz and her husband, Don, retired from AUC in 2019, but are in every nook, cranny, and intention of our practice. We look out for one another, we love our patients and clients, and we focus on the positivity of what we bring to the world.
In 2022 we opened our second location in Park Hill, conveniently located just off I-70 between Monaco and Quebec. As the Denver population extends North and East, we were eager to help serve the pets and pet owners of our new communities. Park Hill is also our educational hub with a large conference room which gets plenty of use by our Continuing Education team. We frequently host both internal and external educational events so our team remains on the forefront of veterinary medicine. Park Hill is also affiliated with the Denver Animal Shelter and helps to care for many of their animals.
In 2023 we opened our North East location, which has already become a bustling hub for the Thornton, Brighton, Commerce City, and Northglenn communities. We have fallen in love with the humans who visit us at North East! A mix of young families, hard-working rural clients, and even people who visit from over an hour away! Every person who walks in the doors of AUC shares one very important thing in common - their love for their pet.
Mental Wellness
In 2019, after years of work, Liz and Kate Parker set in motion an in-house therapy program for the team. Veterinary medicine has one of the highest suicide rates of any profession in the US, and we have only just begun to recognize this as a problem in the community. AUC offers free counseling to our team three days a week, an effort that has become celebrated and adopted by hospitals around the country. Without Liz’s gigantic heart, her generosity, tireless persistence, and selfless nature, none of this would have been possible.
If you would like more information on our therapy program or the history of AUC, please reach out and email Kate.
We are forever grateful for the Animal Assisted Therapy Programs of Colorado for their help in keeping our healers healthy. More about AATPC can be found here.
If you would like more information on mental wellbeing in veterinary medicine and how you, as a non-veterinary professional can help, please visit: https://nomv.org/become-a-nomv-supporter/
