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VETEGA News & Information

Board of Directors:
Jay Friedenson, President

Randy Pratt,
Vice President

Cindy Pratt, DVM, Treasurer

Carole Patten, Secretary

Ingrid Friedenson

Have you ever helped an animal (voluntarily or circumstantially) without being paid for your work? Think about how these situations happened… often it was merely “the right thing to do”, especially for the patient, but also for your staff as well as yourself. Except for the financial aspect, the feelings could be quite nice, and definitely better than imposing death on a patient with a possibly treatable problem.

Except for the financial aspect. It does take funds to run a veterinary practice, to “be there” for the patients. The fees collected from clients support private veterinary practice. It is hard to keep losing money on “charity” cases, whether voluntarily chosen or imposed by circumstance (or by a combination of these things), especially when doing so compromises the ability to “be there”, to have equipment and supplies to deal with problems and even more importantly, a properly compensated and educated staff to administer the care needed.

What if there was a funding source to assist animals in need? Would that make it easier to accept more of these patients? For example, the trauma patient brought in without an owner; the barred owl found by the road after being hit by a car; the stray dog with mange; the flea-infested kittens abandoned in a dumpster; the dog poisoned with antifreeze (witnessed ingestion 20 minutes ago) attached to an owner without money…Does veterinary care offer these animals any benefits?

VETEGA, Inc., thinks that the answer to the last question is “Yes!!!” Veterinary Efforts in Giving to Animals aims to reach out to supporting cases like those mentioned above via funding the needed services provided through the existing infrastructure of private veterinary practice (the “participating veterinarians”). In return, VETEGA will ask practitioners for a standard discount on services rendered as well as an agreement to raise money for VETEGA through offering its “Round Up” program at point of purchase within their practices.

This IS NOT an idea to generate more client traffic for the practices but IS one to remove barriers to offering appropriate care to animals in need; that is, to make it reasonable to accept such patients, where the people presenting them are not able to fully pay for needed care. VETEGA’s board of directors would have, among their responsibilities, the task of administering the funds – that is, they would make the decisions as to which cases would qualify for help; in the event of an emergent need, a pre-defined limited drawing upon a discretionary fund would allow the start of care.

Other areas that VETEGA is contemplating activity in are educational programs for promoting responsible pet ownership and support for wellness care for companion animals for people with limited incomes but need of the benefits of the human-animal bond.

If your interest has been piqued by any of this, please contact us for more information (details on the obligations to participate, questions, comments); we would love to get your input on these concepts.