How it started
A veterinarian who wanted her own diary
Dr. Amara Osei spent eight years as an associate in a busy multi-vet hospital before she opened Woodside Vet & Care in 2009. The hospital was a good one and the medicine was sound. What wore her down was the diary: every slot booked to the same length regardless of what actually walked in, every day fully committed by nine in the morning, and no honest way to see an animal that had gone off its food overnight without asking a worried owner to wait until Thursday.
She opened this practice with a smaller, plainer ambition than most founding stories claim: a schedule with room left in it. That meant fewer appointments booked per day than the building could technically hold, a block held back every single day for whatever came up that morning, and a rule that nobody would be told to come back next week for something that was actually wrong today. Years later, the same-day slots are still the first thing built into every day's diary, before anything else is booked around them.
What the practice believes
Four ideas the practice has not moved off since 2009
None of these are unusual to say out loud. What is unusual, in our experience, is a practice that still means them on a Friday afternoon with a full waiting room.
The estimate comes first
Nothing is done to your animal that you have not seen a written price for, in advance, itemised so you can see what each part costs. If we find more once we are underway, we stop and call rather than carrying on and adding it to the bill afterwards. It slows a small number of procedures down by a phone call. We think that phone call is owed to you regardless.
Watchful waiting is a real option
Doing nothing and rechecking in three weeks is sometimes the correct medical answer, not a way of avoiding one. Where that is genuinely the best plan for your animal, it appears on the estimate as a real line, with what would change our mind written next to it, rather than being talked past on the way to a more billable option.
Continuity is medicine, not a nicety
An animal examined by the same person over several visits is easier to read accurately than one seen by whoever is free that day, because small changes are only visible against a remembered baseline. Ask for the veterinarian who saw your animal last time and we will book you with them wherever the diary allows it.
Cats get a wing of their own
A cat that has spent twenty minutes in a waiting room beside a dog is not an animal you can examine calmly, and pretending otherwise makes the whole appointment worse for everyone in the building. Ours arrive through a separate street entrance, wait in a separate room, and are seen and hospitalised away from every dog on the premises.
By the numbers
2009 to now, in four figures
The practice grew by adding people before it added square footage: Marisol Reyes joined as a technician in 2011, Dr. Nikhil Raman took on surgery in 2013, Tomas Brennan came to anaesthesia in 2014, Dr. Sofia Vargas built the dental suite in 2016, Priya Shah took over the front of the practice in 2017, and Dr. Grace Lim opened the cat wing in earnest in 2018. Seven people, all still here, is not an accident of low turnover — it is closer to the point.
- 16
- years on 61st Street
- 6
- consulting rooms plus a cat wing
- 7
- days a week, including Sundays
- 9
- languages spoken at the desk
The neighbourhood
Three minutes from the 61st Street–Woodside station
Woodside is one of the more linguistically mixed corners of a linguistically mixed borough, and a practice that can only explain a dental estimate in English is not really serving the block it sits on. Between the desk and the treatment floor, this building speaks 9 languages.
Three minutes' walk from the 61st Street–Woodside station — the 7 train, the Long Island Rail Road, and the Q32, Q60, Q66 and Q70 buses all stop within a block. There is metered parking on 61st Street and a small free lot for clients behind the building, entered from the service road. The front entrance is step-free, and there is a bench and a water bowl in the shade by the door.
How we describe ourselves
What we do not claim
We do not claim anyone else's approval. Woodside Vet & Care, LLC is not accredited, certified, inspected or endorsed by any professional or industry body, and this site does not claim otherwise. What we describe on these pages is what we do and how we do it, in plain language, so that you can judge it for yourself and ask us about any of it.
Questions
About the practice — what people ask before their first visit
Is Woodside Vet & Care taking new patients?
Yes. There is no waiting list and no closed books — call or use the contact form and the desk will book a first appointment, usually within a few days and often sooner. If your animal is unwell rather than simply new to us, say so, and you will be offered a same-day slot instead of the first routine opening.
Can I ask for Dr. Osei, or for any particular veterinarian?
Yes, and we would rather you did. Tell the desk who saw your animal last time, or whose name you were given, and you will be booked with that person wherever the diary allows it. Continuity is one of the four things clients tell us matters most, so we treat the request as ordinary rather than as a favour.
How long has the practice actually been open?
17 years, on the same stretch of 61st Street, under the same medical director throughout. Dr. Osei opened the doors in 2009 and still keeps a clinical caseload alongside running the practice.
Is Woodside Vet & Care part of a corporate hospital group?
No. It is a single, independently owned practice with one location, and it has never been sold, franchised or folded into a larger group. That is a deliberate choice rather than an accident of size — the things clients say they value here depend on the practice staying small enough for one owner to know what is happening on the floor.
What actually makes this practice different from a larger hospital?
Four things, mostly: a written estimate before anything is booked, same-day slots held back every day, a cat wing with its own entrance, and the ability to ask for the same veterinarian each time. None of it is exotic. All four take a genuine decision to keep doing as a practice grows, which is why we write them down rather than assume they are obvious.
Do you claim any outside accreditation or certification as a practice?
No, and we would rather say so plainly than let a badge do the talking for us. What every veterinarian and technician here holds is their own individual licence or registration, which we are glad to discuss with you. What the practice itself is built on is described on this page in plain language, so you can judge it rather than take a symbol's word for it.
A written estimate before anything is booked
Book an appointment
We hold same-day appointments back on every single day of the week for animals that were well yesterday. Call the practice and describe what you have noticed, and the desk will book you at the right speed rather than the soonest one.