The Animal Foundation runs one of the most successful high-volume veterinary care operations for shelter pets in the nation, serving thousands of lost and homeless animals that come to us in need every year
In addition to our public Low-Cost Vet Clinic, our veterinary medical team provides specialized and compassionate medical care to every shelter pet that enters our doors. Last year, the team performed more than 10,000 spay and neuter surgeries on pets at the shelter, in addition to treating thousands of sick and injured animals.
Highly-Specialized Veterinary Skills and Care
The animal shelter environment is unique in the veterinary care field, encompassing challenges that are either less common or nonexistent in private veterinary clinics. Shelter veterinarians treat patients that often have no known health or behavioral history. These pets are generally sicker than owned pets, suffering from malnutrition, severe injuries, parasites, infectious diseases, and more. Beyond the needs of individual patients, shelter veterinarians must also be experts in managing the health and care of large pet populations, with hundreds of individual pets under their care each day. The shelter team must be experts in animal behavior, disease control, preventative medicine, organizational policy, and more.
Highly-Focused, Individualized Pet Care
Taking care of hundreds of animals on a daily basis requires a high level of oversight and organization involving many highly-skilled and trained people. Each day, there are four veterinary teams focused on providing medical care for shelter animals (including those in foster care), and there is one team performing spay and neuter surgeries on shelter pets. Our medical teams evaluate every animal’s health every day. They treat dozens of sick and injured pets each day and ensure that all shelter pets are up-to-date on preventative healthcare. Our highly-skilled surgeons perform 45-50 spay and neuter surgeries daily. Our veterinary team also works closely with our behavior/enrichment team to protect the mental health of our shelter pets. Daily collaboration between our veterinary and behavior teams ensures that we are able to care for animals with more complex medical and behavioral conditions each year. These teams together provide multiple layers of care and touchpoints for each of the homeless animals in our care on an ongoing basis.