I cannot say enough good things about West Coast Equine and the care my mare received during one of the most difficult experiences of my life. I brought my mare in for colic surgery performed by Dr. Sullivan, and the experience was completely different from another equine hospital I had dealt with previously. At West Coast Equine, I was allowed to watch the entire surgery, including my mare being brought onto the surgery table with the crane and be moved into the padded recovery room. I was also able to watch Dr. Sullivan personally walk her from the surgery room to her stall. As an owner, that level of transparency, compassion, and respect meant everything to me. At the prior hospital, I was not allowed to stay or see my mare after surgery, which never made sense especially when other visitors were allowed access but not me as her owner. At West Coast Equine, I was always allowed to see my mare and received regular updates. The office staff and hospital team were consistently kind, patient, and supportive. Unfortunately, about a month after discharge, my mare developed severe liver toxicity from post-surgery medication and had to be hospitalized again for over three weeks in intensive care. During this time, Dr. Kemper was very honest with me about how serious her condition was and on multiple occasions she hinted to me that euthanasia might be necessary but never forced me to make the decision. One of the things I am most grateful for is that during the worst night of her condition when my mare had fallen down and I was not answering my phone in the middle of the night, Dr. Kemper did not make the decision to put my mare to sleep on her own. Instead, she continued caring for her and fighting for her. Knowing that my mare was treated with that level of compassion and respect, even when I could not be reached, means more to me than I can put into words. I visited my mare every day at different hours due to my work schedule, and not once was I ever told I couldn't be there. There was always someone there to answer my questions or to help us. Many people told me my mare would not recover and encouraged me to stop her suffering. What made the difference was that Dr. Kemper and Dr. Sullivan listened to me, believed in my mare, and were willing to keep trying when others would not. In the end, my mare survived. She walked out of that hospital alive. After being told by multiple veterinarians that her chances were slim to none, she proved them wrong. I truly believe she is a miracle, but miracles don't happen without people who are willing to fight for them. Thank you to Dr. Kemper, Dr. Sullivan, and the entire West Coast Equine staff for your compassion, dedication, and for never giving up on my best friend. We will forever be grateful! read more

Took my mare in for dentistry work with Dr. Sullivan and have to compliment him and his whole staff for being so awesome! Everyone was welcoming, sensitive to the horse's needs, professional and informative! Thank you. so much! read more

They gave away my horse! Lied and said he is healthy out of the blue when they told me he had strangles for 3 months and I could not get him he was too contagious!!! Completely ignored multiple calls, texts, emails. Could never get an answer as to what could be done w my horse. Never received an itemized invoice. Asked multiple times on course of action. Updates stopped completely yet billing 1k a week continued. Now a friend found my mini listed for adoption. Heartless, unethical, lying saying he was abandoned!!! Kept him hostage 3 months no exercise, no socializing, no turn out. When I requested his STRANGLES which Sullivan claimed incurable be reported, I got the cold shoulder then passive aggressive listing of my beloved now traumatized mini. Stay away!!! read more

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My mare twisted when her foal was three weeks old. Dr. Sullivan and Dr. Kemper came late at night performed lifesaving colic surgery. My mare was able to raise her Colt and made a complete recovery. They received top notch care during their stay. I am so very grateful! read more

West Coast Equine - My mare needed surgery for twisted intestine. I am grateful. She and the baby had the best care during their stay! - Veterinarians Near Me - Somis, California

I wish I could give them a 10 star review. Doctor Sullivan and Doctor Kemper are absolutely the best! I have had 4 horses there in 4+ years. Currently my warm blood jumper, Cristobal who's 24, is there because he has colicked. So far he seems to be OK but it's his 2nd day there. Two of my horses had colic surgery a couple of years ago and you cannot even tell where the incision was. I watched the whole thing from their upstairs viewing area and spent the night there freaking out. My 1st encounter with them was with my warm blood jumper Perfect Stranger. He colicked and had surgery, and was fine for many years. Then, he broke his pelvis after retiring. No clue how it happened but it did and we managed to get him to the hospital. Doctor Sullivan and Doctor Kemper did everything they could for 3 or 4 months to save his life and in the end he just couldn't survive. They handled the situation and me with so much caring and class and, as devastated as I was, when he had to be put down. Nothing worse on the planet but he was in too much pain and could never stand on his own. But, they did everything they could to save him. Like I said, you will not find a vet hospital that is more caring and competent then West Coast Equine! read more

On the one year anniversary of my Mare's death. She fell twice coming out of anesthesia - was I told? No - all that was said to me was that she had a little trouble getting up. Nothing more. They waited to tell us this , waited to x ray her and allowed her to stand on a broken leg and suffer. We made the call to dig deeper , they didn't tell us voluntarily . When I went to say good bye to her , on the day I found out - she wasn't wrapped and was clacking - so they didn't bother to even keep her comfortable. To be clear dear reader, there is so much more to this . But this is all you need to know. To the Staff and Owners : You broke the most important Tenent of your Hippocratic oath , To Do No Harm. She didn't deserve to be left in pain while you decided how to get more money out us or how you were going to handle the incompetence of your intern vets. Shameful . I hope her death stays with you always. read more

I have still have not received any of the paperwork for the test that I was charged and he refused to do the surgery

Dr Kemper and Dr Sullivan have always been fantastic with all of our equine needs. We use them for all of our emergency care and equine breeding. Dr Kemper most recently treated our mare that cut her eye and did a tremendous job making sure nothing else was needed other than stitches. They have also helped us through all our emergencies with kindness and grace. They showed empathy when we lost a horse that couldn't be saved. Their staff sent two cards after the loss signed by all the employees. Dr Kemper has been very successful for us breeding our warmblood mares, with frozen semen. I highly recommend them for any equine emergency or breeding needs, they have also assisted us with our goat emergency. read more

Dr. Sullivan is great. Always comes out to see my horses, on time and handy with a fix. Diagnosed an injury during a soundness check, better in 3 months. It just doesn't get better. A vet you can count on. read more

My horses have been seeing Dr. Kent Sullivan (and his wife Dr. Deborah Kemper) for nearly 18 years, long before the beautiful West Coast Equine Hospital was built. The staff is super friendly and I just love the conservative approach of the care provided. I'm on my ninth horse now and in 50 years of owning horses I have not used more competent, caring vets than Dr. Sullivan and Dr. Kemper. I simply cannot recommend this place highly enough. read more

The day before Halloween 2016, a field vet told me my horse Oggi needed to get to a hospital quickly and suggested West Coast Equine. With help from a great friend we got him there and they immediately examined him and let me know he was in critical distress, requiring immediate surgery to determine the cause. On the table and open, the surgeon determined an uncommon situation requiring a bowel resection and removal of 15 feet of intestine. The surgery was about 6 hours and the recovery about 2 weeks in their very clean facility. We were there daily to see him improve steadily and converse with their great staff. Today Oggi and are again running in the hills thanks to the great efforts of the team at West Coast Equine. read more

West Coast Equine - Veterinarians Near Me - Somis, California

Great staff very thorough with a visit and they help no matter what time of day it is when next time i have a problem with my horse i now exactly where to go thank you very much read more

Thank you Dr. Kemper and all the staff at West Coast Equine for saving Gable's life!! He had a very bad colic and almost needed surgery, but Dr. Kemper thought maybe we could avoid surgery with fluids and monitoring. It was a long night waiting for the call I expected to receive that he would need surgery, but that call never came. By morning he was pooping and mad that he wasn't being fed. Dr. Kemper's "gut instinct" was correct. Very happy to see my boy make a full recovery. read more

Dr. Sullivan has been our equine vet since 1994. He has provided care to all of our horses through the years. His quiet, calm manner gives him easy access to them. Long before the horses realize anything is happening the treatments are almost always completed. He has provided routine care from vaccinations to treating our six severely burned horses after the fires in 2003. During two months of debriding and cleaning burns, Dr. Sullivan, Dr. Kemper, and many volunteers provided round-the-clock care. Dr. Sullivan had no barn facility of his own at that time, which made his life so much more difficult and exhausting as West Coast Equine continued to care for their other client's horses. During the treatment for our horse's burns, Dr. Kemper worked alongside Dr. Sullivan to provide the best possible outcome. It was a grueling, exhausting marathon. I don't know why anyone that didn't have to be involved would not just walk away. It was painful on every level for the animals and humans. Dr. Sullivan cared so much about our horses and did everything he knew to do to bring them all home together. He marshalled every resource he knew of to treat their burns. There could never have been enough money to pay him for the unending hours he cared for them. The horses needed so much care, so much time, so many treatments, and so much medicine. We were blessed to be able to bring five of our six horses home together. And he was there for us to the end with Kiowa. We know that Dr. Sullivan treats horses that are worth far more than ours. The fact that our horses are not worth as much monetarily as most others in southern California doesn't affect how Dr. Sullivan treats them. From the rescue horse to the priceless show horse, they each mean everything to the people that love them. And that is how Dr. Sullivan approaches each one. We are eternally grateful for his talents and that he would choose to keep showing up when our horses need their doctor. We love our animals. From the womb to the tomb, we do everything we can to provide them a great quality of life. But when everything has been done that can be done and it is an end-of-life issue we do not choose to subject them to treatments that only prop them up for a few more days. Dr. Sullivan is crucial when it comes to making the difficult decision to euthanize. Separation from our "good and perfect gifts from above" (James 1:17) is almost unbearable, but we do "not grieve as those who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13). We lean heavily on the promises in the Bible. "For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time" (Romans 8:19-22). We either groan at times in life or pretend we don't. "But someone may ask, "How will the dead be raised? What kind of bodies will they have?" What a foolish question! When you put a seed into the ground, it doesn't grow into a plant unless it dies first. And what you put in the ground is not the plant that will grow, but only a bare seed of wheat or whatever you are planting. Then God gives it the new body he wants it to have. A different plant grows from each kind of seed. Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another" (1 Corinthians 15:35-39). "God has planted eternity in the human heart" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). In May of 2019, Dr.'s Sullivan and Kemper provided a life-saving blood transfusion and treatment to one of our five-day-old mustang filly babies. Sheridan did not thrive from the day of her birth, but as her white blood cell count declined to a critical level, West Coast Equine treated her with a transfusion that was not guaranteed to save her life. Thankfully, she began to improve overnight and by the second day of her hospitalization we were able to begin covering her eyes and hauling her back to her wild mustang mama to nurse for about six hours until it was time to take her back to the hospital for additional supportive care during the nights. Two years later Sheridan is sixteen hands tall and still growing. We're so grateful to all of the staff at West Coast Equine. They are priceless. read more

Our older horse was there a week. Everyone at the hospital was amazing, reception, techs, and Dr. K. Boo needed to stay a week. We received updates and they accommodated drop off and pick-up after hours. The entire experience was great. Our horse has been home a week and is doing great. We are so grateful for their care. read more

1 star for my previous posting. This old guy doesn't use yelp that often. Sorry to all who think she deserves 5 stars.

1- Doctors are incompetent and negligent. Example: they did not keep my horse's feet trimmed on schedule even though I was calling every day to request to do so. My horse that was hospitalised there went for over 10 weeks (shod) before they called the farrier. She subsequently developed laminitis, which was due to excessive pressure because of wrong angles due to overgrowth (These are West Coast Equine doctor's words) The horse died as a result. 2- Charges: fees are atrociously high, and THEY WILL CHARGE YOUR CARD WITHOUT AUTHORISATION AND WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION - BE WARNED!!!! 3- Communication: they contradict themselves all the time so you never know what is really going on. I have so many more examples of shocking things that happened that are too long to explain. This is a terrible place and I urge horse owners to absolutely avoid it. read more

Amazing veterinary practice! With their ongoing commitment and dedication to ongoing changes in medical treatment they keep updated on approved treatments. We are in better hands because of them. read more

This is not the sort of place you want to be the Dutchess of. However I appreciate the quality of service, quality of facilities, professionalism and caring offered by the staff here. Due to circumstances I was allowed to visit well after visiting hours to spend extra time with my gelding before I had to say goodbye to him. I'll be forever appreciative to the understanding they offered me. read more

It has been 1 year since my daughters horse was euthanized. I will never take another one of my horses to any vet here again. I will travel to Alamo Pintado for emergencies. Dr. Kemper has the worst bed side manner and she is a liar. Upon arriving at the hospital I brought my gelding here with a very high fever. He had colic several times before and this was nothing that I had ever seen to do with a colic. He had a temp of 106 and would not eat at all. He had not been rolling or acting like a typical colic at all. I had told Kemper that the horse had been sick before and my insurance had run out with colic and I thought it would be appropriate to put this horse down for the sake of everything he had been through in the time we had him. He was only 13. She downright refused, making me feel like I was doing something wrong and how could I ever think of putting an animal down. When her husband Sullivan told me to put him down a year earlier because he was so sick, but we fought for our precious gelding. I called my normal vet that I use regularly and asked him his opinion, he was on vacation and thankfully answered his phone for me. He told me that it was perfectly acceptable to put this horse down with all that this horse had been through. Kemper told me this was NOT colic and my insurance WOULD PAY FOR IT. So considering she was the vet I said ok lets try for the 4th time in 3 years to keep this horse alive and well. She put him on fluids and kept him overnight with antibiotics. I went the next day to visit him and asked questions and she had no interest in speaking to me at all. I told them I would take him home and administer the antibiotics myself to save me $$ and she wouldn't even come and talk to me when the horse was being discharged, I asked 4 different times and the intern went in to get her and said she would not come out. On my discharge papers she wrote COLIC. I had the intern go back in the office to tell Kemper she said it WAS NOT COLIC and I wanted it written that this was not colic, because that is what Kemper told me. I would have a better chance of my insurance paying the bill. I believed her. She said this wasn't colic and my insurance would never pay for it. So she wrote it a different way which lead the insurance company to believe it was colic anyhow. She would not change it. However she got her money and she was paid in full by me. The horse wasn't even there 24 hours but she milked another $1200.00 out of me. I took him home and called another vet out the very next morning because nothing was working getting his fever down and the horse was just plain sick. I called the other vet and she was lovely. We got him on a different antibiotic routine that actually helped him and he started to come around after a couple of days. That same morning Kemper had a barn call to our barn, saw me there and didn't even ask how the horse was, she had no care in the World about the well being of the horse she let suffer. About 1 week later my horse who had suffered enough got laminitis so badly he could not move, not even 1 step it was horrible to watch and heartbreaking . I called the vet that took over his care after we had seen Kemper and we put him down. We put him down out of caring for an animal that suffered from colic for the past 3 years on and off. We put him down because no matter how you spin it this horse was just a sick horse and we tried all we could to help him. He would not have suffered more then he had to if Kemper would have euthanized him when I asked. My poor horse suffered a great deal because of a money hungry vet who in my opinion cared more about making $$ then the actual well being of my precious gelding. He deserved more then that from Kemper. My daughter deserved more then that from Kemper. My Horse died Aug 8, 2016 and it has taken me this long to write a review on West Coast Equine.It is August 10, 2017 and I still cannot believe what that vet did to our horse and my family. All the interns at this hospital were wonderful and caring. Its too bad that Kemper is not like them. But all the caring interns will never makeup for what Kemper is like. I will never take another animal to this hospital as long as I continue to own horses. I care too much for my horses well being to put their welfare at risk. read more

I am amazed at the amount of professionalism, kindness both my horse and I received. My horse got sick I dropped him off they kept me informed, constantly I was able to make informed decisions and the different ways to save money etc. These people are in this for the love of animals. I didn't know if places like this existed anymore these doctors and staff are great...these are people you can trust with your most prized possession. I can't thank them enough.... read more

In my opinion, BE AWARE of this facility and Dr. Kemper, I was very disappointed in the manner in which we were treated and I agree with Whit Ney's Google review completely. The only considerate person I found was the receptionist. Our horse arrived on Qatar Airways in July 2020 from Belgium with pneumonia and spent almost 2 months at West Coast Equine, exhausting our entire medical insurance and more. Every time we visited, shavings barely covered the solid concrete stall floor. Updates were sporadic and inconclusive. Prior to pickup and transfer to UC Davis, I had called to ask all that would be required prior to the release of our horse and received no response. All payments to date had been coordinated on release from our Equine insurance. On arrival, for the prearranged pickup, I was advised that the outstanding balance had to be settled in full, prior to release of our horse, at which point the stall door was chained, padlocked closed by Dr. Kemper and I was held to the outstanding ransom and treated as a criminal. Had I known that 30 days settlement, was no longer an option, I would have made prior arrangements to settle this exorbitant bill. I hope no one is exposed to the hardships I was, however if you are I would not recommend West Coast Equine. read more

Brought my horse here this morning for a "nerving" procedure. Staff was kind, place was clean, and they even let us watch the surgery!

My horses have been patients of Dr. Sullivan and Dr. Kemper for the past 10 years (since before West Coast Equine Hospital was built). I can't say enough wonderful things about both of them and their hospital. They've saved my horses lives multiple times, both in the field and in the hospital. I've seen them perform complex surgeries and procedures as well as help elderly equine patients become ambulatory again. They have incredible horse sense- one of the reasons I originally hired Dr. Sullivan was because I saw him handle a horse who was difficult for every other veterinarian. He was so calm and handled the horse so well that I was incredibly impressed- and the horse liked him! I have a horse who can be difficult to treat and he is so patient with him and understands him and has gained his trust. In fact, all of the staff at West Coast Equine work this way! I have always been treated with kindness and respect and my input on my horses' care has always been wanted. Another thing that impresses me is that every horse- from show horses to rescues- is treated like a champion! My horses have always been impeccably clean and tidy when they've stayed there and their every move monitored. Their facilities are top notch, clean, and organized. I'm always impressed by the level of professionalism and compassion shown by all of the staff. I trust Dr. Sullivan, Dr. Kemper, and their staff with my beloved horses' lives and I wouldn't trust anyone else!!! read more

There is a very special equine hospital in Somis, CA called West Coast Equine, owned and run by Dr. Ken Sullivan, VMD and Dr. Debbie Kemper, DVM. There are also two interns Karen Helfrich, DVM and Brenda Stadelmann, DMV along with several great vet techs there. I was overwhelmed by how amazing, how knowledgeable, how sweet and patient the staff was with me. They understood all my concerns. They make you and your horses feel special... like you are the only client. I knew that my horse Buttercup was in the very best hands. It was really refreshing to deal with the staff at the hospital (that isn't afraid to speak or be able to discuss in depth) my Horse's situation, unlike the other hospital that is just down the road. West Coast Equine was so welcoming and easy to talk to - it was really delightful to be somewhere that I felt so relaxed, unlike some other equine hospitals where everyone is so uptight and rigid because of the unfriendly management. If your horse ever needs surgical or hospital care, please check out West Coast Equine... you can't go wrong! read more

The best vets in California. I've been going there for over 15 years never had a problem.