About Progressive Veterinary Hospital

“Red” Crago retired from his family’s veterinary practice in Youngstown, Ohio in the mid 1950s. He moved to St. Croix shortly thereafter, and through the urging of the community, he gradually developed his residential property into the veterinary hospital that is now Progressive.

By the mid sixties, when a teenaged Eugene Petersen started helping out after school, the clinic had grown to a full fledged practice with 4 employees. One of those employees, Sylvia Ward Hanley, is still with the practice today. A second, Mary Edwards, went on to manage the St. Croix Animal Shelter for decades.

Dr. Petersen worked summers through high school and college. Dr. Ed Jacobs, another retired veterinarian, joined Dr. Crago in the seventies, and worked with the practice for many years before branching off to open his own practice in Peter’s Rest.

After graduating veterinary school at Tuskegee University, Dr. Petersen did an internship in Boston before being offered a job with Crago back home in St. Croix. Dr. Crago also recruited Dr. Paul Hess from St. Thomas, and sold the practice to Hess and Petersen in 1979.

In 1988, a teenaged Kasey Canton began working weekends, summers, after school, and then through college and veterinary school – much as Dr. Petersen once had. in 1993, Dr. Hess left the practice to open Island Animal Clinic own at 5 Corners. After graduating Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in 1998, Dr. Canton interned with Dr. Petersen for 2 years, and bought out the assets of the hospital in 2000.

Progressive Veterinary Hospital is proud of its extended history as a provider of veterinary services for over sixty years.

As our practice has grown, we have pursued excellence through continuing education, and reinvestment into our practice and our community.

We look forward to many more decades of service to the St. Croix animal community.