Animal Welfare Professionals

Hi everyone!

I am a vet tech and work as the medical manager for a shelter that takes in around 1000 animals per year.  We are doing both owner surrender and transport, along with some surrender prevention programs.

We are going to be redoing our medical space to add in the ability to do surgery.  With that comes a long term plan to not only start doing surgery for animals in shelter (yahoo!) but to also, down the road, begin providing low cost community medicine to the public (S/N and basic wellness/preventative services).

My specific question (though I would welcome ANY input at all that you have with starting up surgery, low cost services, etc.) is for those of you who are already providing some of these services (or at least are doing surgery in house)- how does your staffing work for this?  Right now I am the only full time medical person on staff.  I have a contract veterinarian that I work with weekly and by phone/email, but that's it- it's just her and I.  Obviously, in order to start surgery and eventually community medicine, we will need to extend our staffing.  So, I'd love to hear how any of you who are doing this staff it and what you have for staffing structure/organization.

I'm also interested to hear if any of you have two different veterinarians- one for shelter medicine, and one for surgery.  Our current shelter vet, while awesome, is a veterinary physical therapist in her other work life and has no interest in surgery, so we would be looking at hiring a vet specifically for surgery purposes.  If you do this, how do you work with the situation for ordering medications/supplies, in particular controlled substances?

Welcome to any input at ALL!!  Thank you!

I work at a shelter that does inhouse surgeries and also owns an offsite clinic that only does S/N. 

Shelter location has a contract vet atm that comes 2x a week, 1 lead tech, 1 FT and 1 PT tech that does 30 surgeries each of those two days along with medical rounds for roughly 400 animals on average a day with intake of over 7500 a year.

Clinic location has 1 vet, 3 vet techs and a front office manager. That location does average of 37 surgeries a day. 

The veterinarian that you would hire to do S/N surgeries would need a DEA on file related to the address where the controlled drugs would go. At that point the person who orders would be up to the organization and the Vet on file since it is their license that could be put into jeopardy. 

I hope that others will give insight, also. Good luck on your new adventure!

Hi Heather:

Our shelter takes in about 1,000 dogs and 500+ cats. We have a medical suite, and contract with a clinic that provides us with both a vet and a tech (the same 2 people) under contract. They come in 2 days per week, and we only do our own cats and dogs. Best of luck!

I am the Medical Manager of an all cat shelter in Colorado. We recently expanded our operation with a new brick and mortar facility. We took in about 800 cats/kittens last year. We do a lot of transport to and from local vets and other spay/neuter clinics in the region. We have a mobile vet that's on board to assist with in-house surgery. We hope to do neuters on site and later spays as well. I also have cultivated several local vets in town who support our mission and provide services when needed.

I am the only full time medical person. Having spent 12 years in shelter medicine at 3 shelters with training as a tech, a vet assistant, non-profit management. I have 3 part time staff members. Two kennel techs that assist with meds, care. And a transport person to assist with all the running around to and from vets. Have a dedicated team of about 15 volunteers that help out too. 

We won't be doing surgery for the public as the large open admissions shelter here operates a Low Cost SN Clinic already. However, their clinic assists us when they can.

Good luck with your plans. Shelter work is a challenge but so rewarding.

Thanks, Carole Casner

Cat Care Manager, Happy Cats Haven in Manitou, Colorado

We have an onsite spay/neuter clinic.  We take in roughly 1200 dogs and cats per year and spay/neuter all at our facility.  We also spay/neuter public animals on Tuesday's and Thursday's.  We have a part time vet that does all of the surgeries.  He also over sees the medical end of the shelter animals.  We do not provide medical diagnosis for public animals though.  We would love to expand to be a full time, full service clinic but our vet is near retirement age and doesn't want to commit to long days again.  We are actively seeking a full time vet but it is a challenge, there seems to be a shortage of them and even more so, a shortage that is willing to primarily be a spay/neuter vet.  Our surgery staff consists of our vet, 1 part time vet tech and 2 "helpers" that bring the animals in to the surgery area, trim nails and things like that.  We are able to have prescriptions sent to our shelter as our vet considers this his home base of operation.

My shelter has an annual intake just over 1200 (up from about 650 3 years ago). We also have a TNR program that expanded to 500 surgeries this year, and a public surgery program one day a week. In addition to all this we do one Saturday a month- 5 times a year these are low cost vaccine clinics and months between these are low cost S/N in conjunction with another organization in the area. We have also expanded our initial intake requirements of young, healthy animals to also include some older animals and more with issues (masses, dental issues, URI cats, etc).

I am the only vet and I am technically PT (3-4 afternoons a week plus one full day) but this can get close to FT some weeks (I have another job 4 mornings that I am reluctant to leave quite yet...). We also have one "PT" tech whose hours also get close to FT (or over) many weeks. However, due to it being impossible for us to keep up with all of these projects and due to me ending up doing things techs could do a lot of the time (intakes, rechecks, setting up meds, labwork, etc), we are currently looking to  hire an additional PT tech. We also have a surgery helper who is a volunteer but makes all our packs, helps with public surgery rabies certificates and paperwork, and cleans all our instruments as we go during surgery. She saves a lot of time just by the tech not having to make packs or clean instruments!