Dr. Nicole Sorensen, DVM

Dr. Nicole Sorensen decided she wanted to be a veterinarian when she was a child, and then spent years doing something else entirely. She and her husband owned and ran The Valley House Inn, a hospitality business they operated for two and a half years before selling it. It was a real business with real payroll, and it taught her something most veterinarians never have to learn: how a decision made in the office ends up shaping what happens on the floor.

She went back for the degree she had wanted all along, earning her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine at the Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine through the WIMU regional program, a four-state partnership that includes Utah State University.

The cases that interest her most are the ones that have already passed through other hands: chronic, complicated, or simply unexplained. Families arrive after years of not getting a straight answer. Her approach to them is unglamorous, and it is the whole method: full attention on every case, and a workup thorough enough to actually settle the question instead of narrowing it slightly. That is a large part of why Agave is being equipped with an in-house laboratory, digital X-ray, and ultrasound from the day the doors open. Answers come faster when the tools are already in the building.

Emergency work is the other half of that. She takes the cases where the decision has to be made in the next hour: an intestinal obstruction, a pyometra, a stomach that has bloated and twisted, an acute poisoning. Emergency surgery is ordinary work for her rather than an exception, and it is a large part of why Agave is being built to take emergencies during its posted hours from the day the doors open.

It is also why she builds hospitals rather than joining them. A veterinarian who owns the building is the one who decides how long an appointment runs, what equipment gets bought, and whether a sick pet gets worked into an already full day. In September 2025 she opened Mtn Green Animal Hospital in Mountain Green, Utah, a hospital she built and owns, and it has served that community the same way since. Agave brings the same model to St. George: independent ownership, decisions made locally, and a veterinarian answerable to the people in the waiting room.

Outside the hospital, her time goes to her family.

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