Thank You Dr. Henriksen

Rising Up And Catching Up!

SPAY/NEUTER CLINIC UPDATES At HSSC, we remain committed to providing affordable access to spay/neuter services in our community — even in spite of 2020’s pandemic curveballs! Not only does this compassionate commitment reduce the number of homeless pets entering our local shelters each year, it protects pets from serious future illnesses such as uterine infections and breast, uterine and testicular cancers. This year, temporary closure of our weekly clinics due to Surgeon General pandemic guidelines — and then

Spaying and neutering saves lives! Photo by Labs & Co. As you know, our CVC focuses on providing urgent and emergent veterinary care to pets in our community, and refers requests for basic, non-urgent wellness care to other low-cost local providers. Unfortunately, during the COVID-19 pandemic and Shelter-in-Place ordinance, lowcost routine wellness care has not been readily available in our area. To help out pets during this challenging time, we teamed up with our good friends at Dogwood Animal Rescue Project to put on two safely distanced wellness clinics in the parking lot of our Santa Rosa campus this past August and September. At each clinic we were able to provide basic wellness services, including exams, vaccines, deworming, flea and Thank You DR. HENRIKSEN! A highly revered, long-time local veterinarian, Dr. Peter Henriksen, was one of the earliest supporters of our Community Veterinary Clinic.

Weekend Wellness Clinics

reopening with new social distancing safety measures — resulted in a backlog of over 500 pets waiting to be spayed or neutered! But our nimble team persevered. They took advantage of the downtime to make renovations in the surgery prep and treatment areas to expand workspace, create one-way workflow and make social distancing easier. They also implemented new sanitation and disinfection guidelines. With the clinic now fully re-opened, the staff is working diligently to keep clients safe by conducting check-ins and discharges at curbside by appointment, wearing PPE, including gloves and (fashionable!) facemasks at all times. This fall they’ve been hard at work whittling down the waitlist (currently, they’ve got it down to about 120!) and ramping up as safely as possible to return to a high-volume schedule. We are deeply grateful for the support of Community Foundation of Sonoma County, the Ted and Joyce Picco Endowment Fund and YOU for making all this possible! Your donations help us ensure that every pet is safe, wanted and loved.

Would you like to add your support? Please visit humanesocietysoco.org/donate and select Spay/

Neuter from the drop-down menu. Thank you!

Stepping up to meet community demand.

tick preventatives, heartworm tests and prevention, and microchipping. All together, we helped over 131 animals! Thank you, Dogwood Animal Rescue, for partnering with us for such important and needed outreach to our

community and their pets! He recently made a generous donation, establishing the “Pete’s Caboose” fund to match client co-pays and help our CVC cover costs in the near-term. We are moved and inspired by Dr. Pete’s own career of kindness and service. His support for our work at the CVC surely suggests we are headed in the right direction.