386 treatments a day

Sometimes when adopted pets go home, a few days or weeks later they become ill.   Some adopters may become angry with us because they feel like we should have discovered the illness, even if it didn’t present itself to us when the pet was here at the center.  It was only after it was home and the adopters noticed some issues resulting in the pet going into distress that we become aware of the medical condition.   

This is a story that plays out many times a year.  Often times the adopter wants us to reimburse them the cost to treat the pet.    

Most of the pets that come to us have unknown medical history.  However, from the moment they enter our center, they receive an exam, vaccinations, treatment for worms, fleas and ticks, and if a problem presents itself during the exam, they get more extensive medical treatment and diagnostic testing.  We work hard to get them healthy so they can be adopted.  Everything we do medically to every pet, we share with the adopter.  Any illness that is diagnosed is also shared with the adopter. We do everything possible to try to set adopters up for medical success with their new pet, such as providing them with a free vet visit with local vets. This way the pet can get a complete physical by a vet, and it can be determined if there are any medical problems that we didn’t see while the pet was in our care. This enables the new client to get established with a vet practice for ongoing wellness care.  We also offer adopters a free trial insurance plan and we have a 30-day adoption refund policy in case they discover something they can’t afford to deal with. 

Our biggest problem is with cats and kittens.  Certain times of the year, our intake swells from 160 cats a month to close to 400 a month, and sometimes we end up with illness.  We could euthanize them or we can treat them. We choose to treat the sick kittens and cats we receive daily.  When you have unvaccinated kittens in a shelter environment with adult cats who are shedding disease and viruses, you have illness.  What some people may not realize is that stress can cause illness.   A completely healthy kitten can develop an illness overnight, or even days later just by being adopted.    Newly adopted pets become stressed by being moved into a new environment, which can break down their immune system and cause illness to appear.  This results in us seeing a healthy kitten or cat at the time of adoption getting sick in a day or two after it goes home.   We are so thankful for the amazing community that takes on this risk by adopting, and then takes on the responsibility to treat them in their home because it is the right thing to do and they have the ability to do so. 

The operations surrounding being no kill is messy at times.  Unfortunately, we sometimes adopt out animals that we didn’t know were sick.  However, let me share with you some facts so you can understand the difficulty we face.

At this moment we have 115 pets under medical care.  That adds up to  about 386 actual treatments performed a day.  We have one vet and two vet assistants doing this work.  We are told that the average vet in a vet practice sees between 12-15 pets a day and has anywhere between 12-25 pets under treatment, and most vet practices have a large staff to assist them.  We have one vet working 5 days a week, and she deals with 115 patients, with more coming in every day. 

We get requests from the community daily asking for help with their own pet’s medical problems.  We have strays coming in off the street needing surgery and major intervention; we have parvo puppies we are tirelessly working to save; we have 2-week old-kittens barely able to keep their heads up because they are so sick that we have to syringe feed them to save their lives.   

We see the worst of the worst in medical cases and we see between 250-400 new pets a month coming into our facility.    

Because of the nature of our work, the community comes to us to help their own ill pets.  They feel they have nowhere else to turn because they cannot afford vet care elsewhere.  We help those who surrender their pet to us, but unfortunately, we are not a full service vet or an emergency vet; we don’t have the staff or resources to be one. 

Even though we have a vet on staff, she can’t see every single animal. She only looks at those that show signs of illness or injury. Every animal gets examined by our trained staff upon intake and is vaccinated.  Those that need further medical attention will get on the medical staff’s radar.

We can test, do blood work, and even perform surgery, but we will miss things. We are human, and some illnesses don’t always present themselves to us. We may miss the signs of an illness, not due to our neglect, but as a result of the circumstances of managing a busy shelter. We are always looking for ways to improve and to operate better. 

We do not have infinite resources to treat medical problems. People see this beautiful building and believe we should have unlimited resources but unfortunately we just don’t. Like people in their own lives, we have to make decisions based on the best use of the resources we do have. This means that we can’t always reimburse for vet bills at full retail price, and this is why we ask adopters to return the pets if they can’t treat the illness themselves. We have many vet partners who we utilize when our medical staff cannot handle a certain case, and they give us discounts and donations on their services. This allows our resources to go further to help more pets.    

We feel so lucky that this wonderful community understands that we are taking in pets with an unknown medical history, and they are willing to take responsibility for the medical issues that come up after adoption. Many are willing to donate towards this very important component that allows us to continue to save lives.

We see things that a normal vet office may never see because we take in pets that may have had owners who didn’t care, caused them harm, or cast them aside to be forgotten with terrible illnesses or injuries. We really do see the worst of the worst, but yet, we are able to save 96% of these pets. We know that we are doing great things here, all because of the support of our wonderful community.

To make a donation to our medical fund please click here and make a note on the donation – medical fund.