She came to us in tears. Her husband had been laid off, her family was very poor and they had 9 children. A pastor in Topeka had given her a dog. She was thrilled to have the pet because she was originally told that the dog was in good medical condition and was current on required vaccinations. The pet had an eye that had ruptured, was in a lot of pain, and needed an immediate specialty surgery.
Dr. Andrea Straub is an amazing surgeon. She has been the operating veterinarian in our clinics since 2002. An eye removal surgery would have cost this family about $800. They would have never been able to afford this and the dog, who was around 1 year old, would have died. We did the surgery for her for $75. Melody, the Director, paid the extra $125 that it actually cost. She didn't want to euthanize this darling dog and these sweet children were so excited to have this pet. The mother said that the dog was perfect for them, loving with the children.
For weeks after we did this deed for them, they came to our facility to pick up flyers about our clinics. They put out about 500 flyers and posters in low income neighborhoods and community stores to bring attention to our services. The dog recovered well and we were blessed with visits for updates.
Testimonial
April 30, 2008
The Pet Connection and Dr. Straub have been a godsend to our rescue because of a lack of "rescue-friendly" veterinarians in our local agricultural community. Our adoption program was running at a $20,000 deficit last year because of the incredibly high prices we were paying to vet our rescued and abandoned companion animals.
Now that we have been working with Pet Connection for several months our adoption program is breaking even and allowing us the funds to grow our humane education programs in the local school systems.
Dr. Straub and the staff at the Pet Connection have always been available to us to answer questions, and offer assistance with many issues including behavior evaluations and so much more! We could not provide the animal rescue services in our small, rural community without them!
Sincerely,
MiChielle Cooper, Executive Director
The H. Dale Buck Animal Welfare Memorial Fund, Inc.
Specialty surgeries for low income families, for the elderly and for the disabled are often not an option due to budget constraints. These families often need and rely on the pets in their care for comfort and companionship. Options must be presented. We assist these families by offering low cost services and also by helping them access funding that might be available to them. We only service low income families.
If you have found a pet and need to offer affordable vet care to it while you look for the owner and a new home if necessary, we will give you our bottom of the barrel prices. We hope this encourages more individuals to pick up animals that are homeless and take care of their basic needs. This also helps stretch the community dollars that are available in this service arena.
Meet Our Veterinarian
Andrea Straub graduated from K-State in 1988. She moved to Las Vegas and resided there until 2000. In Vegas, she worked in private practice. She also owned her own mobile practice which was limited to taking care of pot bellied pigs. It was called PIG-R-US. She came to Kansas in 2007 and continued with private practice until 2007.
It was in 2007 that she made the big leap from private practice to the nonprofit veterinarian services. She found it to be a passion of hers due to the fact that she loves surgery. She felt the most important aspect of working nonprofit was being able to be of service to lower income people. She has practiced 20 years and feels she is now doing the work she was meant to do.