The Heart of PriorityPet Urgent Care
Your Trusted Veterinary Team
At PriorityPet Urgent Care in Hermitage, we’re ready to support you with after-hours veterinary care for illnesses, injuries, and everything in between.
We’re proud to care for the pets of our community with the best veterinary care and loving dedication. Here, your pets are family.
Our Doctors
Dr. Stacy Smith
DVM
Dr. Stacy Smith is one of the increasingly few native Nashvillians, having grown up in the Inglewood area. She has always possessed a profound love for animals, and this has been cultivated since she was a child with over 20 years of experience in veterinary medicine. She sees each animal as a gift, and regards the human-animal bond as one of the most beautiful aspects of our lives.
She earned her undergraduate degree in History and Pre-professional studies from the University of Notre Dame. She completed her Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine at Kansas State University, followed by a one year rotating internship in medicine and surgery at Blue Pearl Pet Hospital Pittsburgh North (formerly Pittsburgh Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Center.) After this, she moved back home to Nashville to start her career in veterinary medicine. She has worked in general practice, the fast-paced arena of emergency/specialty medicine, and also the difficult but necessary hospice/end-of-life field. Her unique skill set and vast experience gives her the ideal background for urgent care. Urgent care is a vital area of practice that is much needed in veterinary medicine today as the number of beloved pets continues to grow, especially in the Nashville area. At Priority Pet Urgent Care, we want to fill a need for pets and their owners when the unexpected happens, when the ER is extremely busy, the problem is not life-threatening, and the primary veterinarians are overloaded.
Dr. Smith lives in Nashville with her husband and daughter, and two big goofy dogs, Althea and Bowie. An avid music fan, she enjoys the plethora of opportunities to see live music here in Music City. She also enjoys reading, hiking, spending time with her family, and watching her favorite football and hockey teams.
Dr. Lauren Sparks
VMD
Dr. Lauren Sparks grew up in a small town just outside of Roanoke in southwest Virginia. She attended James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA for her undergraduate degree and graduated with her Bachelor of Science in Biology in 2011. She then worked as a veterinary assistant in order to gain hands-on experience in the field prior to applying to veterinary school. She was accepted into the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine and graduated in 2017. Shortly after graduation, she moved from Philadelphia down to Nashville and completed a rotating internship with Nashville Veterinary Specialists and Animal Emergency and fell in love with the area. After her internship, she decided to stay in the region and has continued to practice as an emergency small animal veterinarian in the area.
Her goal is always to provide the highest quality care possible and to treat your pets with the same compassion and care as she would her own. Through working in the emergency room, she developed experience treating patients in need of both urgent and more critical care. She is very excited to join the team at Priority Pet Urgent Care and to be able to start offering this service as an alternative to a visit to the emergency room for patients that need to be seen quickly but are not in a life threatening situation. Her hope is to prevent some of the stress that she knows can come with unexpected veterinary visits and to help provide families with an additional option for care of their pets when their primary care vets are closed or at capacity.
Her family consists of her husband, son, and daughter. In addition, they have a “zoo” full of critters. She has two English Mastiffs, four cats, six ducks, five goats, and two highland cows. She enjoys spending time with her family, being outside as much as possible, reading, and baking (especially sweets and bread or anything sourdough).