15 Nov 2025
Vienna Killick had just graduated with a HND in nursing and was contemplating a career in the human health care sector when COVID-19 struck in March 2020. But an unexpected lockdown romance changed the course of her life and her career, as VBJ discovered when we caught up with Vienna last month…
VBJ
Job Title
Staff: full-time vets 6 • registered veterinary nurses 6 • practice administrator 4
Fees: initial consult £47.50 • follow-up £35 • home consult £80
The origin story of MobiVET in Bridgend, south Wales is not a tale of a long-planned business strategy, but rather one of personal chemistry meeting an urgent market need.
At the heart of the business is the dynamic partnership of Vienna Killick and Vlad Rimbu, who launched their mobile vet service just weeks after meeting one another, using the pressure cooker of the 2020 pandemic to build an empire.
The journey from a single van operating on a £25,000 loan to a thriving, multi-site network is a testament to their dedication, strategic foresight and commitment to a team-first philosophy.
MobiVET came into being when the two founders met and experienced an immediate connection. Vienna recalls that the start of their personal relationship and the launch of the business was “a bit of a whirlwind.” “We weren’t married at the time,” she noted, highlighting the unconventional start to both their family and their business.
Vlad, an experienced local vet, was driven by a deep desire for professional autonomy. “He just wasn’t settled anywhere and wanted to have the clinical freedom to work for himself,” Vienna explained. “He also wanted the ability to offer clients a unique, continuous service that was unavailable elsewhere.
“I’ve got a bit of a different background, so I’m not a veterinary surgeon, I was from a human health care management background and graduated in 2020 with a HND in nursing studies and health care management.
“When we set up MobiVET, Vlad got on with being the vet and I took on the role of overall practice or business manager, looking after the business side, while Vlad was free to focus on clinical work, as he recognised his own limitations in that area, and it has worked out amazingly well.”
The practice officially started life on 7 June 2020 with a small white van and a big idea and it quickly became a lifeline for the local pet-owning community in their corner of south Wales.
With Vienna acting as Vlad’s assistant, the dynamic duo strategically avoided routine care and dedicated their service to the most urgent needs.
Their focus was entirely on emergency care, which meant “euthanasia and emergency pain relief”, specifically helping people who were isolated, unwell and vulnerable.
Vienna said: “The scope of their service was enormous, and we actually ended up covering all of south Wales and some of west Wales, too. For four intense years, our policy was simple – we literally didn’t say no to anybody.
“This meant we were on call all the time and I was fully involved, not just managing, but being hands-on, as well as managing the business and doing all the bookings.”
The community response was overwhelming, validating their model immediately. ”So, within six weeks, we were pretty much fully booked,” Vienna said.
“The level of demand meant we were working a gruelling schedule from nine in the morning until 10 at night, six, seven days a week.
“But it meant the practice’s reputation grew rapidly and we were also doing a lot of stuff on socials and I would actually say the whole practice is very social media built, which has really helped us to expand and grow awareness of what we do.”
However, this relentless dedication eventually proved unsustainable, especially with a growing family – the couple now have two young children – and they were forced to scale back their extreme hours.
Vienna added: “We have essentially done all of our home visits from 2020 until now, like 24/7.
“This pace meant that Vlad wasn’t coming home until 3am some days, which was not sustainable, so we made the difficult compromise to stop taking phone calls after nine o’clock or before 8am anymore and found an out-of-hours provider [Valley Vets] to give us somewhere else we could send clients to and just give us that brief respite.”
The intense client demand for a consistent, physical location was the catalyst for the next phase of growth. Vienna said: “So I would say, within 10 weeks of starting, we kept getting asked by clients to open a bricks-and-mortar practice because of the level of care we were offering and because of the way that we are as people.”
The search for a building began in November 2020, with the timeline for securing and opening the site in Bridgend being remarkably fast.
By December 2020 a 2,400sq ft building had been found, by March 2021 the sale was completed and by 31 October, Vienna and Vlad had completed its renovation into a modern veterinary practice with all the facilities needed for the next stage of MobiVET’s growth.
Expansion was handled with financial prudence, which Vienna cites as a key achievement.
“We’ve been really savvy in the fact that we haven’t put ourselves in debt,” she explained.
“We initially operated the building on a lease-to-buy basis and did not renovate the first floor for three years, prioritising funding for the essential services first, and that has meant we are completely debt free.”
The Bridgend facility is now a full-fledged veterinary hospital, designed to maximise both clinical space and staff amenities. “We’ve got two consult rooms downstairs, reception and pharmacy,” Vienna added.
“We also have digital x-ray, dental x-ray, two operating theatres and a dental suite. The upstairs includes dedicated cat facilities, which are essential for quality care: we’ve got cat dental, we’ve got a cat theatre, we’ve got isolation units, we’ve a cat consult room, we’ve got a full lab, and then we’ve got a large ancillary space for our staff.”
MobiVET now employs six full-time vets, eight nursing staff – including SVNs and four full-time receptionists with its operational success built on its hybrid structure and a core philosophy designed to combat veterinary burnout.
Vienna, who has recently been named as one of London Vet Show’s (LVS) 30 Under Thirty, has a management ethos that is non-negotiable and intentionally designed to put the team first.
She has always had the same motto: “My team come first, my patient comes second, and my client comes last.”
The reason is rooted in logic: “If your team’s happy, your patients are going to be well looked after, and your clients are going to be happy because your patient is well.
“I think the minute you start prioritising client focus, you lose your team. And I just don’t do that.”
This commitment is realised through a unique operational model designed to mitigate the industry’s high stress levels.
The practice vets see a high caseload, “about 25 patients each a day”, but MobiVET maintains its mobile service to offer vets an escape from the consult room.
Vienna said: “The mobile vets, working on ‘zone days’ see far fewer patients, so they go from seeing 20-25 patients in a day to seeing less than 10, and then it just totally gives them time to recharge.
“I think this prevents them from getting that typical burnout you can see in some practices.”
The practice’s deep commitment to its staff is backed by extensive benefits. “We are literally like a family,” Vienna explained.
“We really try to foster this culture through good employment benefits with in-house psychotherapy, private health care insurance, as well as critical illness and life assurance as well.
“And clinically, we have built a system with a lot of peripatetic services, bringing specialists like a cardiologist and dermatologist on-site to reduce referrals. This allows us to offer a wider range of services, and we only have to refer out highly complex cases like neurology, mainly because we don’t have in-house MRI or CT facilities at this point.”
The success of the MobiVET model has resulted in significant recognition, with the practice named Best Mobile vet in the UK, best vet in the county, and one of the top 25 practices in the UK at the BestUKVets Awards 2025.
And it is actively pursuing more accreditations, having applied for the SPVS Awards and for ISFM Cat Friendly status, while Vienna, who is still just 27, was clearly thrilled to be part of this year’s LVS 30 Under Thirty.
And it doesn’t stop there, with the future for the practice involving more ambitious expansion. Vienna added: “We’ve kept the mobile side of things and the bricks and mortar practice, and we’ve just bought two new units, so we’re opening two more branch practices now as well.”
The new locations will be in Aberdare and Treorchy, with those openings scheduled for late spring in 2026 and winter 2026. The investment will bring some technological upgrades, with the biggest being a CT scanner at the site in Aberdare that will enhance the set up and capabilities of the entire group.
Crucially, the expansion is designed to reinforce the mobile service, with the new unit in Aberdare being larger than the current Bridgend site, meaning it will serve as a hub for the mobile vet service so the team will not have to make repeated trips back to the current Bridgend hospital site.
And on a personal level, Vienna is ensuring she can contribute clinically as well as managerially: “I just finished my veterinary nursing qualifications, so I’m just looking to progress more into that side of things,” she added.
“I am just waiting to complete my OSCEs and become a qualified veterinary nurse, so by next February I will be able to start getting more involved clinically as well, and I am really looking forward to that.
“It has been a real whirlwind for Vlad and me, but it has been an incredible journey for us too, and we are all really excited about the next chapter.”
