New non-profit vet clinic opening soon in Calgary
Affordable veterinary care is a 'hot topic,' says clinic co-founder
A new non-profit veterinary clinic will be opening soon in Calgary.
Run by the Canadian Animal Task Force (CATF), the animal hospital is located just south of the Stampede grounds.
R.J. Bailot is the executive director and co-founder of the clinic, and he chatted with CBC Radio's The Homestretch about how the clinic will operate once it opens.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
CBC: How did you come up with the idea for this clinic?
R.J. Bailot: It's been in the works for the past couple of years. Accessible, affordable veterinary care is a real hot topic right now in the animal welfare sector. We realized there was such a huge need for it in our city, in our province. It's needed really everywhere in North America.
CBC: How will the prices at your clinic compare to what people would pay at a regular vet clinic?
RB: There still is a fee per service. As a charity, we're able to offset some of the costs through donations and grants that we receive. So our fees are going to be substantially lower than perhaps someone would pay in a regular clinic, but we also are able to provide services to a very specific group of folks.
Individuals who are either low income, perhaps they're on AISH (Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped). So we're not open to everyone in the public, but there will be a group of people that we'll be able to service.
CBC: How do people find out if they are eligible for the services you'll provide?
RB: We're still working on sharing our launch date. So we're hoping sometime in January that we'll actually be open. On our website, cataskforce.org there's a link to the hospital and there'll be criteria that we post on there on how to apply to become one of the clients.
CBC: So before you take your pet to the clinic, you check the website to make sure that you're eligible.
RB: That's correct.
CBC: Is this the only non-profit clinic of this type in Calgary? Is this a first?
RB: It is. It will be the first of its type in the city, and I believe the only one in the province. There's a few other clinics like this throughout Canada, but we're starting to see more of them pop up because there is such a huge need.
CBC: Give us a sense of just how important it is to provide affordable care for people's household pets.
RB: We recognize how important the human-animal bond is and it is so important to us that we keep families together, and that includes their animals.
What we're seeing is that people are often relinquishing their animals to shelters, and shelters right now are overcrowded. Everyone's at capacity, and often it's because [owners} are not able to afford some of the veterinary costs.
We know pet-friendly housing is also a huge contributor, but then we also have people who are making decisions, perhaps they may be euthanizing animals prematurely because they're not able to afford some of the cost that the animal may require for veterinary care.
We anticipate that we're going to have a lot of people reaching out to us. As a community-driven organization, we just hope for the support of Calgarians to allow us to continue and to expand our work.
CBC: Will these prices apply across the whole range of services that vets provide? I mean from extreme, chronic or acute care, right to spaying, neutering and regular checkups?
RB: For sure. So the clinic is a full-service clinic. In that, we'll be doing, like you said, routine procedures like spay, neuter, vaccines and health exams. But we'll also be able to do X-rays and ultrasound and some diagnostics in house. We'll have the ability to do quite a few procedures in this space, which we're very excited about.
CBC: So how does a non-profit vet clinic pay the bills?
RB: We rely completely on donations and grants. To get us to the point we're at, we've already raised $2.5 million in the last year-and-a-half to help get the clinic lifted, so to help us with the initial purchasing of the building and then start filling it with the equipment that we need.
We're still trying to raise an additional $1 million so that it allows us to finish with all the equipment we need and to staff and support us for the first year … that's why it's really important that people realize that there is still a fee. But again, we're able to keep that fee nominal just because we are able to receive donations.
The cost of everything has gone up. And that's no different in the area of veterinary medicine. And so we know it's expensive to run a clinic and to buy equipment and buy medications.
CBC: Now, presumably veterinarians could make more money working in a private setting. How hard is it — or easy — to attract vets to your clinic?
RB: We've been really fortunate that we have a reputation already because we've been a charity for so many years and we do work throughout the province. We've really established ourselves and we've been getting a lot of support from the local veterinary community. We've had multiple individuals — whether it be veterinary technologists, assistants or veterinarians themselves — apply to come work in the hospital because it's a different opportunity for them and they'll see the immediate impact that they will play in supporting families.
CBC: Will other vet clinics refer patients to you if they are seeing people that maybe can't afford a major procedure?
RB: Absolutely. We've already had some clinics to reach out to us to ask us how that would work. If they're able to refer people to us. If they're not able to afford services through their clinic, it's something that we'll do our best to help them with.
CBC: You said you don't have a firm opening date yet. Can you give us a ballpark of when you expect the doors to open?
RB: We hope to open kind of by the end of January, so we'll definitely make an announcement and share it with people.
We really want people to come and check out the hospital because we've been working so hard at it for the last couple of years. We're excited to show it to Calgarians and to see what people could be part of.
We have room-naming opportunities that people could sponsor, maybe name it in honour of one of their animals that have passed or a family member … there are a lot of ways that people can be involved.