March 1, 2025
If Noah’s Arc had a veterinary office, it would be this one. “We’ve had a kangaroo, a lemur, even a camel. If it can fit in the building, it can come in,” says Dr. Sarah Timm, who sits at the helm of the Roxbury Animal Clinic.
The sunshine yellow Colonial building is home to a team of six doctors who care for nearly 20,000 patients. We walk past a labradoodle, light headed from a cocktail before teeth cleaning; around the corner rests a cat under a pile of blankets post-spaying; in an outer room, a peacock recovers from a corneal ulcer. “One of her babies scratched her,” reports Timms.
The practice was started in the 1980s by Dr. Paul Elwell, serving both farm animals and smaller pets. Timm arrived in 2013, and has continued the long tradition of being a mixed practice. And a good thing too, as your 2-month-old goat may require a blood transfusion, or your emu may have a hole in his heart, or your alpaca could need treatment for gastrointestinal parasites (all real patient stories). Today about 40 percent of the practice is still farm animals.
If this sounds like the life of the Scottish country doctor James Herriot of All Creatures Great and Small, that may not be a coincidence. Timm attended the University of Glasgow, the same veterinary school as Herriot. “There are a lot of sheep in Scotland, so you really have no choice but to learn everything.”
Timm’s medical tales are limitless: a Border Collie had a bleeding tumor on her spleen. An 8-pound mass was removed and she lived to be 16 years old. “Animals bounce back faster than humans. Probably because they don’t get caught up in the emotions,” suggests Timm.
Despite the emotional high of saving lives, the hardest work Timms has to do is “economic euthanasia”—putting a pet down due to the high cost of treatment. “I have no judgment whatsoever when it comes to deciding what someone is comfortable spending, but the emotional toll on the owner is enormous.”
With bottles of pills lining the walls and cages stacked floor to ceiling, they are at max capacity and about to pour cement on a new building. The existing one will be devoted to services such as dermatology and acupuncture––not for the owners but for the pets. As animals have become an extension of family, so too have their health bills. In Timm’s practice 30 percent of pet owners now carry insurance and about 50 percent consult an oncologist upon learning of a pet’s cancer diagnosis.
Timm herself is mom to not only her 8-month old human child, Oliver, but also to Boo, Theo, Alfie, and Ginger (her canine pups), and Harper the cat. Ever since shadowing a vet at 14, Timm knew this was her calling. When pressed to name her favorite animal, she responds: “Goats. So much personality. They’re the dogs of the farm world.”—roxburyanimalclinic.com
