Care and Care Alike
Mobile units across the country bring services to rural animals that would otherwise go without veterinary care and preventative treatments
For most people the occasional trip to the veterinarian’s office for a vaccination, treatment of a minor injury or even a quick nail trim is routine. In many urban areas, in fact, house calls by a mobile veterinary clinic are widely available.
For some people, though, the vet-visit process isn’t nearly as simple. The distance and cost involved are enough to dissuade them from seeking care for their pets.
So for thousands, help periodically comes to them. A mobile unit with vets and state-of-the-art equipment rolls into the area and tends to hundreds of pets a week. The vets give shots and perform spay and neuter procedures, and also address everything from ear infections to tumor extraction to porcupine quill removals, all free of charge.
Rural Area Veterinary Services (RAVS), a non-profit program operated by the Humane Society of the United States (www.hsus.org) in conjunction with The Fund for Animals (www.fundforanimals.org), sets up shop for two days to three weeks in communities where access to care is limited and residents’ ability to pay is equally so.
“We focus mainly on Native American reservations in the West and Midwest, and in the Appalachian area in the South,” says Kathy Covey, spokesperson for HSUS, Washington D.C., which started the program to reach pets and pet owners in under-served rural communities.
The program treats nearly 10,000 animals a year, providing about $1 million in care to animals that otherwise wouldn’t receive it. Originally named the Remote Area Medical Veterinary Volunteer Corps, it began in 1995 before becoming part of HSUS in 2002. Today, it has an international component that has traveled to El Salvador, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico and Nicaragua to provide pet and large-animal care to impoverished areas.
Dr. Eric W. Davis, the veterinarian who developed the program and now leads RAVS, says his motivation for focusing on rural animals is simple.
“As this planet gets smaller and smaller and, unfortunately, the gap between rich and poor gets broader and broader, which happens all the time, the welfare of these animals is probably going to be in much worse shape than it is now unless we provide some assistance,” he says.
A shortage of veterinarians within a reasonable distance to pet owners, coupled with the financial hardship of paying for care, means many pets living in rural areas never get spayed or neutered, don’t receive vaccinations to protect them from disease and suffer unnecessary discomfort from conditions that could easily be treated.
A recent RAVS survey found, for example, that 58 percent of the companion animals taken to its Appalachian clinics had never seen a veterinarian before.
The six staff vets who travel with RAVS are assisted by local vets, vet techs and vet students recruited to provide additional support and gain knowledge and training. The team may perform as many as 300 vaccinations a day and 30 to 60 surgeries during a clinic stay. Most of the care is basic – spaying and neutering and pest control – but RAVS vets also tend to sick and injured animals, Covey says. Those who travel with the mobile unit also provide education for pet and animal owners on overpopulation, animal cruelty or equine wellness.
Dr. Scott Bender, Chinle, Ariz., is not part of the RAVS team, but knows the problems rural practitioners face. He’s a tribal vet with the Navajo Nation Veterinary and Livestock Program (more information, www.desertanimalcompanions.org), which serves the 26,000-square-mile Navajo Nation that spreads from Arizona into Utah and New Mexico. An estimated 160,000 stray dogs and cats roam the three-state reservation, most of which are animals that aren’t sterilized and will never receive medical care.
Bender travels about 5,000 miles a month between two Navajo Nation clinics. “It’s just one of the joys of a rural practice,” he says. “Our biggest problem is that there just aren’t enough folks who want to practice (veterinary) medicine in areas like this.”
In Bender’s area, a position has remained vacant for three years and still has no takers because of the remoteness and long hours required. Most veterinary school graduates, he says, still prefer urban areas and need more incentives to work in the hinterlands.
“In this practice, you bring it, we’ll see it,” he says, even knowing he may not be paid or may have to arrange a long-term payment plan. “We see cattle, horses, sheep, goats, dogs and cats.”
The Humane Society’s Covey says vets with the RAVS program stress to animal owners the importance of preventive medicine and vaccinations. “We do a lot of outreach to communities to increase their knowledge of the importance of some of the basics,” she says. “Sometimes there’s no population to support a veterinary clinic, and sometimes even the basics are an economic challenge for people.”
Several low-cost spay and neuter clinics operate across the country. No More Homeless Pets in Utah, for example, takes its “Big Fix on Tour” mobile clinic to locales around that state.
More information on low-cost sterilization clinics is available at Spay USA (www.spayusa.org) and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (www.aspca.org).
To donate or volunteer for the RAVS program, visit www.hsus.org/ravs or www.ruralareavet.org, or to follow the travels of the RAVS veterinary team, you can sign up at the Humane Society Web site for a free RAVS newsletter.
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