A fellow traveler I met on the road passed on this very helpful website:

http://www.healthypet.com/

On the homepage is a box to find AAHA-accredted animal hospitals. I wish I had known about this when I started in 2007. I ended up taking my Riley dog to a couple of questionable vets and wish I hadn't. This certainly doesn't guarantee a good vet, but it's a good start

Wait, what happened to Riley? Is he she ok?

Hi Steve - it's a very sad story when I was in Eugene, Oregon. It's on the Silver Snail website. Go to the Eugene entry. It was in Eugene where I learned about the vet website from my friend/neighbor Bonnie.

Awww ... I'm sorry how things turned out. He looked to be a great dog!

Yeah. He really was. Thanks.

Thank you for that!  We just went through Kiki getting sick while we were in Florida (she's a-ok now), and ended up at a vet we didn't like.  We also use Yelp and Google reviews when researching such things.. but always nice to have multiple resources. 

Also a holistic vet list:

http://www.holisticvetlist.com/

Thanks for this .. I was kind of wondering how I'd handle emergencies with the beagle.