Standifer’s Animal Clinic

Standifer’s Animal Clinic has treated pets in Homewood since 1952, making it one of the longest-running businesses of any kind in the city, let alone among its veterinary practices. Located on 19th Place South, the clinic has stayed independent through more than seventy years of operation, a run that predates most of the retail and restaurant businesses that now fill Homewood’s commercial corridors.

The clinic currently operates under veterinarians Dr. Hugh Washington and Dr. Will Murray, with Lacey serving as hospital manager overseeing day-to-day operations. That leadership team runs a full-service veterinary practice rather than a narrow specialty clinic, covering wellness exams, diagnostic testing, surgical procedures, dental care, orthopedic services, and urgent care alongside more routine preventive visits. The clinic also handles pet boarding and grooming, giving Homewood pet owners a single practice that can cover both medical needs and day-to-day care in one location.

Grooming at Standifer’s covers bathing, trimming, and styling for both dogs and cats, handled by groomers on staff rather than outsourced to a separate business. Services include de-matting and de-shedding treatments, medicated shampoos for pets with skin conditions, and flea and tick checks built into the grooming visit, an approach that folds basic health screening into what might otherwise be treated as a purely cosmetic appointment.

The clinic’s hours run Monday through Friday from seven in the morning to six in the evening, with a shorter Saturday morning window from seven-thirty to noon. Sunday hours are limited specifically to boarding pickup, letting families traveling over a weekend collect their pets without needing to wait until Monday, even though the clinic does not see regular veterinary appointments that day.

Over its decades in Homewood, the clinic has picked up recognition from several local publications, including a nod as one of the best animal hospitals in Homewood from Homewood Life and recognition as one of the better veterinary clinics in greater Birmingham from Birmingham Magazine. Neighbors have also voted the practice a favorite veterinarian in both Homewood and the broader Birmingham area through Nextdoor’s community recommendation feature, the kind of grassroots reputation that tends to matter more to pet owners choosing a vet than formal advertising.

Located on 19th Place South, in the same general pocket of small businesses that includes several other Homewood service providers, Standifer’s has built its client base primarily through longevity and word of mouth rather than aggressive marketing. For a clinic that has now served multiple generations of the same Homewood families and their pets, that slow accumulation of trust, built appointment by appointment since the early 1950s, has proven more durable than any single marketing campaign could achieve, and it continues to anchor the clinic as a default choice for pet owners across the city.

Because the clinic combines medical care, surgery, dental work, boarding, and grooming under one roof, Homewood pet owners can often handle several different needs in a single relationship rather than splitting their pet’s care across a veterinarian, a separate boarding facility, and a separate groomer. That consolidation tends to matter most during stressful situations, such as needing to board a pet on short notice while also getting a checkup done before a trip, when having one clinic that already knows the animal’s history can simplify what would otherwise be a scramble across multiple businesses. Seventy-plus years after opening, Standifer’s continues to operate as a genuinely local, independently run practice in a veterinary industry where many clinics nationally have been bought up by larger corporate ownership groups in recent years. That independence, on 19th Place South in the heart of Homewood, remains part of what longtime clients point to when asked why they still make the drive.