Advocates Predator Awareness to Pet Owners and Helps Fill the Gap in our Current Veterinary Healthcare Providers’ Shortage
Written By DeAnn Lubell. Photos provided by Amy’s Purpose, INC.
It was a beautiful Sunday morning on December 22, 2019. I opened the French doors to let our puppy mill rescue terrier, Amy, and 75-pound American Bulldog, Sugar, go out into our backyard to sun themselves as they loved to do. Our property sits up high, overlooking wide vistas of rugged desert terrain. We knew that there were predators but hadn’t really encountered any in the few months we had lived in our new home. I went into the kitchen long enough to grab a cup of tea, turned around, and spotted three large coyotes standing over the lifeless body of my precious Amy. We had been clueless about the dangers of predators because of our own naivety. I was shattered.
In honor of Amy, we started a nonprofit to help educate and bring awareness to pet owners on how to better safeguard their fur babies. We are not against coyotes or other natural predators. They were here first. We invaded their territory. Coyotes can be found in all rural areas, small towns, gated communities, quiet suburban neighborhoods and, yes, even big cities.
When our American Bulldog Sugar injured her back leg, I contacted my local veterinary clinic, a simple five-minute drive from my house. The doctor/owner was short on help and could not take my dog. I ended up calling every vet and emergency clinic to no avail. The answer was always the same: “sorry, we are too busy.” We ended up driving an hour to the nearest clinic willing to accept our emergency. After this, I initiated an online poll. “What the heck is going on?” I received dozens of horror stories from pet owners who had experienced the same challenge of having to drive miles outside of their desert communities to get medical treatment for their pets. The critical shortage of veterinarians, vet technicians, and vet assistants has activated a major crisis in animal emergency healthcare. Panicked pet owners seeking urgent medical aid for Fido and Fluffy are being turned away as veterinary clinics were critically short staffed to handle the demand.
After extensive research and interviews with veterinarians, I found answers. There are three major complications. One, too few veterinary medical vet schools exist in the United States, therefore not enough veterinarians, vet techs, and vet assistants are graduating. Vet medical schools are as expensive and as academically challenging as human medical schools. For every veterinarian in this country, there are 18.5 positions available. Second, people were getting more pets than usual during the pandemic, causing an overload of veterinarian healthcare needs on top of what was already an impossible scheduling feat. Third, low wages have also hurt the pet-care industry.
My first call was to my friend, Michael Phipps-Russell, executive director of the nonprofit Loving All Animals. We discussed the problem at length. Animal rescue groups were facing the same roadblocks as were the pet owners. It was around this time when the highly respected journalist, Bruce Fessier, joined Amy’s Purpose and became a passionate champion of its missions.
“It sounded like something I could support,” said Fessier, who is the first newspaper journalist named to the Coachella Valley Media Hall of Fame, and the producer of the October 13th’s An Evening of Liberace fundraising event. “In 2022, DeAnn and I discovered there was only one program for veterinary assistants with in-person learning at the College of the Desert through its Partnership and Community Education (PaCE) program. The tuition is $3,195 plus materials. We felt we could encourage more individuals to enroll to become certified as veterinary assistants if we provided full scholarships to those who couldn’t afford the tuition. Over the past three years, we have awarded over 20 scholarships.”
An Evening of Liberace on Sunday, October 13th, raises the funds which enable Amy’s Purpose to offer things like Predator Awareness & Education programs, and Veterinary Assistant Scholarships to locals for College of the Desert. These are two initiatives which will help relieve the animal healthcare shortage in our Valley. Held at the beautiful Casa de Monte Vista estate in Palm Springs, this event features acclaimed Liberace protégé Jere Ring and the #1 Liberace tribute artist David Maiocco. Also, a cabaret show with Francesca Amari, psychics, informal modeling, and more.
Please go to amyspurpose.net or call 760-220-8713.
