Stray Haven opens wellness clinic for affordable pet maintenance

By Basil E. Bacorn — 

Stray Haven Humane Society & SPCA has officially opened a wellness clinic at their 194 Shepard Rd. location, offering the community a new way to obtain affordable maintenance care for their pets. Clinic services include vaccinations and wellness checks as well as parasite screening, parvovirus testing, ear mite treatment, and more. Most services offered range from $10 for a rabies vaccine to $30 for parasite screening.

“It’s another option for the county to have to come in and not have to wait for maybe a free rabies clinic, maybe they get full and they get told they can’t go to them,” said shelter Manager Megan Tryon-Mosier, who further explained, “We can offer those services here. We’re hoping and trying really hard to bring back the spay and neuter here too.”

“We’re in works with a vet to see, but we still need the vet tech to work with the vet before we can offer them,” she clarified about spay and neuter services, adding, “We’re really pushing that hard to try to find someone so we can do that as soon as we can for the public.”

While speaking with staff at Stray Haven, this writer witnessed the delivery of a new cat to the shelter, who was accompanied in her carrier with a litter of four to five wide-eyed kittens, no more than two weeks old by appearance. The family had been obtained from a local mobile home community.

“We’ve been doing pretty good; kitten season, just like all the other shelters, has hit quite hard,” Tryon-Mosier noted just prior to the arrival of the new litter of kittens, adding, “I believe we have seven or eight moms with kittens right now, which brings us to a total of I think 20-30 kittens already. But we are doing surprisingly pretty [well]. Since the first of January, to the last week or so, we’ve adopted out 92 cats and 129 dogs so far.”

“We’ve had quite a few owner surrenders, with all the prices and stuff going up,” she explained. “We’ve been getting a lot of eviction of owner surrenders, where they have to move to different housing or they just lose their housing, so we’ve been bringing in a lot of those dogs and helping them find homes.”

Tryon-Mosier also expressed that shelter volunteers are always more than welcome, with one of the biggest tasks that needs to be done is animal socialization. 

“I tell people when they come in and they’re looking to volunteer, I would say if you don’t feel comfortable walking a dog or anything like that, just coming in and sitting with them and socializing with them – it is so huge,” Tryon-Mosier stated, adding, “If you have kids that want to volunteer but are not of age yet, if they bring books, they can sit outside of the cat kennels and read to them – it gets the cats used to seeing kids and hearing the noises of kids.” 

Such socialization activities help shelter staff see how well various animals interact with children, and helps to increase the likelihood of adoption.

The wellness clinic is open at Stray Haven each week, Wednesday through Friday, from noon to 5 p.m. by appointment only. For more information, call the shelter at (607) 565-2859 or email to megan@strayhavenspca.org.