About us

We’re Michael Berman and Katie Kitchen, two veterinarians who met and fell in love in vet school, got married a few years later in 2012, and finally realized our dreams of owning a veterinary practice when we bought Animal Hospital at Grayhawk in 2016 (the very same year we also had our twin boys!)

Desert Ridge is the hospital we got to build ourselves. In 2022 we took a large empty room in our own neighborhood (it used to be a wedding dress shop!) and built a clinic from the ground up, using everything we’d learned and loved from six years at Grayhawk.

With many veterinary hospitals being taken over by corporations, we’ve seen how some clinics have shifted from being the family veterinarian to focusing on patients as numbers and appointments as transactions. Neither of us went to veterinary school because we wanted to see how much money we could make - we went because we’re passionate about animals and their people, and finding ways to help them through the best medicine we can practice. We truly want to be your family veterinarian.

One of the best ways we feel we can do this is by cultivating the feeling of family within our very building. We’re both still practicing veterinarians and not owners who stopped seeing patients. One of our technicians has been with us since the day we took over Grayhawk in 2016 (and worked with Dr. Kitchen for four years before that!) Two more of our technicians are coming up on eight years. We’re not a formal place - we’d rather take the time to get to know something about you and your pet than just move you through the door.

While we strive to embrace the nostalgia of the family veterinarian, rest assured we also work to maintain cutting edge medicine. Because we built Desert Ridge from scratch, it opened with modern records, anesthetic monitoring, and diagnostic equipment from day one. All of our vets know there’s always more to learn, and we are constantly sharing something new we just read or learned with one another. We genuinely are a team who works together to try and provide the best medicine, and the best experience for our clients and patients alike.

Speaking of helping the experience of our patients - we embrace the Fear Free methods because we believe our patients shouldn’t have to be scared when they come to the vet. If your dog or cat is frightened at the clinic, let us know before you arrive and we will plan around it, whether that means sending something home to decrease anxiety beforehand (once we’ve met your pet), examining them on the floor instead of the table, or making sure we’re taking the visit at a pace they’re comfortable with.

Building Desert Ridge taught us so much that in 2023 we took Animal Hospital at Grayhawk down to its shell and completely rebuilt it, using everything we’d learned here. Now we are a married veterinary couple with twin boys and twin veterinary hospitals, who are excited to welcome you to our family. We can’t wait to meet you!

Our veterinarians What things cost Fear Free