While Family Veterinary Hospital of Stone Ridge co-owner and veterinarian Hanh Chau offers her patients the typical care most vets offer, she specializes in rehabilitation and acupuncture in order to help her patients manage ailments and sometimes to avoid surgery.

“This is a personal goal and dream of mine to be able to have my own place and be able to choose my own program and promote my own beliefs,” said Chau, who has worked as a relief vet in the area for more than six years and opened Family Veterinary Hospital Oct. 1.

Family Veterinary Hospital is a family affair. Chau's husband, Aaron Zeitlin, is co-owner and business manager. And Piper, the couple's 5-month-old Morkie, can be heard jingling through the office. (He wears a miniature jacket with a bell attached so no one accidentally steps on the little fella.)

Chau and Zeitlin have known each other since attending Broad Run High School, and they know the area very well.

“There is also a need [for another veterinarian] in the area,” Zeitlin said. “The demographics of the area show that there is one veterinarian to 6,500 people. And Hanh has been employed [as a relief vet] nonstop, so we knew there was a need.”

The offices of Family Veterinary Hospital are top-notch, with in-house laboratory providing lab results in five to 10 minutes; surgery room complete with heated surgery table; ultrasound, anesthesia, ventilator and patient monitoring machines; digital X-ray and dental X-ray machines; an underwater treadmill for rehabilitation and conditioning; three exam rooms; and boarding and grooming facilities.

“A lot of these devices minimize the risk and provide quality,” Zeitlin added.

The entire hospital is run on computers, cutting down on paperwork and allowing patients' owners to have documents such as lab results and X-rays emailed to them. And music is played throughout the hospital to calm the patients and the staff.

“Our goal is wellness and quality prevention,” Chau said.

To provide this type of care, she is certified in canine rehabilitation and acupuncture.

“The East and West approach is to get the best quality of life for the patients,” she said. Chau added that in some cases, she has been able to work with a patient through Eastern approaches, allowing her to rehabilitate the patient without surgery.

Both Chau and Zeitlin added that now is probably not the best time to start a new business, with the way the economy is going, but they have faith in their business plan that they have been working on for years. And although they are running a very high-tech hospital, they say the equipment is not influencing their prices. Their prices are taken from Benchmarks, a publication that provides veterinarians with competitive pricing and management of veterinarian practices.

Family Veterinary Hospital of Stone Ridge's pricing falls in line with other veterinarians' prices, with a canine exam costing approximately $195 for a wellness exam and bordetella, rabies, distemper, heartworm and fecal tests. A feline exam costs approximately $126 for a wellness exam and distemper, rabies and feline leukemia tests.