Couple celebrating 10 years serving local animals

Couple celebrating 10 years serving local animals

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Elizabeth Frohse and her husband Dr. Thomas Tischer will soon be celebrating 10 years as owners of the Neshoba County Animal Hospital.

Tucked away in a little brick building on east Main Street, Frohse can be seen helping customers with her massive rescue dog, Mandy, by her side. Tischer is hard at work in exam rooms tending to the animals that come in, whether for a checkup or sickness. 

The couple bought the clinic 10 years ago this fall and have experienced their share of highs and lows. Like most businesses, when COVID-19 hit this spring, they cut hours and limited visits. After an increase in demand, though, they decided to open back up to full capacity. 

Frohse believes the spike can even be attributed to the quarantine. “It’s almost like [pet owners] needed some human contact, and you know, we are medical. Maybe it was just kind of like an outlet or a relief for them,” Frohse said. “And know that they were doing something positive. ‘Positive’ would be a good word for that because they were. … We saw animals that hadn’t their vaccines in years and all of sudden. We had no proof that one dog had ever been vaccinated. He was 12 years old.”

“We have a huge referral network cause we have people coming from every county around here and then some more,” Tischer said. 

As Frohse recalls, Tischer used to be on-call for emergencies 24/7, but more recently, he limits his availability after 9:30 p.m. and instead refers to another clinic. Now 72, Tischer has postponed his retirement from his initial plan of 40 several times, and the clinic is so busy recently he barely has time to sit down.

The couple came to own the hospital after Frohse desired to return to care for her aging father in Mississippi. Frohse had worked in the telecommunications industry for many years, and Tischer is originally from Minnesota and started his practice working with large animals. Moving to be closer to their son and his wife, Frohse and Tischer were in San Antonio, Texas, for some time, and Frohse was working at the vet clinic there as a receptionist, though she would go back and assist Tischer from time to time. After enough people suggested the couple was a good vet team, they decided they would buy their own practice once they got back to Mississippi.

Frohse is integrated into the community with the Rotary Club and the Main Street Association. So much so that, when Frohse broke both her ankles last year, friends banded together to make meals for the couple for three months. Frohse and Tischer attend First Baptist Church Philadelphia, and they participated in the recent Love Out Loud event by offering free rabies shots.

The couple runs a small farm when not at the clinic where they have horses, cats, dogs, cows and chickens, which Frohse calls her “ladies.” They used to compete with horses, at one point winning the 2011 Pinto World Championship, with their horse Ima Cool Mr. DC Star. Frohse said they have since moved on from horse shows, as it takes up too much time. 

Tischer’s best advice to pet owners is observation. Many times, Tischer said he has seen pets come in where it is already too late, with sickness already too set in, to do anything to save the animal. Catching an animal’s illness by noticing signs of distress, like drinking too much water or not eating, is key to the long-term health of one’s animal.

“That’s probably the hardest part to convey is observation, just knowing what your animal is like morning till night and day-to-day,” Tischer said. “We’ve had clients come in where their animal has been not feeling well for four days, and then we’ve got a problem. … Our world is so fast, and even in the calmest of situations, we’re still going too fast.”

Both Frohse and Tischer also emphasize the need for a proper diet with one’s animals. Dogs and cats cannot eat human foods, and too often, Frohse said, they have seen animals coming in sick after eating things like cake. If people can manage it, Frohse also recommends a yearly check-up with the vet, so they can have a baseline of what a person’s pet is like healthy to have better records when something goes wrong.

Looking towards the future, the building is paid for and the practice almost so, and Frohse is optimistic. Once the pandemic stops halting the supply line of medicine and other goods, the business looks to be only going up.

“Bottom line is, I like being able to help people and make things better,” Frohse said. “And I think we have.”






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