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| Tiffany Durham |
| RAVS volunteer Nora Grenager and Delilah. |
By Eric Davis, DVM
As the RAVS program rolls to the end of its fifth year as part of The HSUS, I can see a lot looking both backward and forward. The wonderful team of dedicated professionals who form the core of the program continues to be enormously productive.
RAVS in 2007
The statistics for 2007 are not all in, but conservatively RAVS provided 26,490 medical and surgical treatments to a total of 6,231 animals for a value of more than $1 million in free services. While impressive, these numbers leave out a lot of services that can’t be quantified.
The figures do not include the hours of training that our veterinary student volunteers received as they helped RAVS veterinarians and veterinary technicians make our clinics a success. In 2007, we had 550 students from 25 different U.S. and European veterinary schools.
The numbers also don't capture many diverse RAVS outreach projects, which include Dr. Susan Monger’s work in training Mexican veterinarians in spay/neuter techniques, Dr. Jennifer Scarlett’s advising officials in Armenia about animal sheltering, and Dr. Leo Egar’s setting up anesthesia equipment for the Grand Bahama Humane Society.
Windi Wojdak, director of RAVS U.S. programs, also worked with the RAVS Web guru, Andrea Lee, to develop a volunteer management database that will serve as a model for other organizations. Windi also serves as a resource for small rescue groups in American Indian reservation communities from California to Minnesota, helping them with everything from finding funding to setting up spay/neuter clinics.
Looking Forward
Looking ahead, projects such as the Spanish language pet care manual and the expanded veterinary teaching curriculum on the RAVS website will be completed in 2008.
A generous grant from the Banfield Charitable Trust will make it possible for us to put video demonstrations of RAVS surgical and medical techniques on the Web. This will not only allow volunteers to be better prepared for their busy field clinic assignments, but will also serve as a free resource for any organization engaged in community-based veterinary care.
For the Sneedeville initiative, RAVS and The HSUS are helping to guide a small community in the mountains of eastern Tennessee in establishing the first animal shelter and spay/neuter clinic in the area. This project aims to take RAVS beyond just providing intermittent field clinics to establishing long-term, sustainable services for unwanted animals for an entire rural county.
Stories of Success
While statistics of the past and exciting initiatives for the future are worth considering, RAVS has always been about the individual. There are so many stories that it’s hard to choose. I was thinking about this the other day on my way to treat a sick horse here in Salinas, Calif. Riding in the truck with a very talented young veterinarian, Dr. Nora Grenager, and her dog, Delilah, I realized that Nora had been a RAVS volunteer when she was a student at the University of Pennsylvania. This was back in 2002, the year RAVS became a program of The HSUS. Delilah, who was sitting in my lap, was rescued from the Standing Rock Reservation, where Nora was volunteering.
The Standing Rock trip is always a hard one, with long days and the need to move the clinic to a new community every night. We were in McLaughlin, S.D., working in a deserted old warehouse next to a bingo hall. The crew had to thoroughly clean the cavernous building before we could even set up the clinics. Long extension cords had to be strung from the bingo hall to power the surgery lights and monitoring equipment.
Nora, who had a real aptitude for equine work, had been out in the hot prairie sun working on the teeth of some tribal horses. A local rescuer brought in a bedraggled puppy, unbelievably thin, that she had found wandering around some garbage at the edge of town. After some intravenous fluids and food, the little dog began to perk up. The rescuer, Judy White Bull, had no more room at her house, and the dog had no evident owner. Nora was taking a shift in recovery and became attached to the puppy. She offered to take her back to Pennsylvania. She resisted the urge to name the pup Bingo, instead calling her new companion Delilah.
That was five years ago. Since then Delilah and Nora have been inseparable. They graduated from veterinary school and moved to California to do an internship at Steinbeck Country Equine Clinic in Monterey. Delilah, who is incredibly well behaved, became a fixture around the horse hospital and in the big diesel truck Nora drives in the field. Of course, Delilah couldn't always ride along when RAVS took Nora on long plane flights to Mexico and Texas. But when she can, Delilah makes rounds every morning and comes in for emergencies like any dedicated professional.
Currently, Nora is doing an equine internal medicine residency, a demanding program that requires a lot of study, clinical practice, publication, and a grueling series of exams. I have no doubt that Nora will complete the course of study and be an excellent specialist, with Delilah by her side. It is gratifying to know that Nora’s story is one of so many RAVS has had a part in penning.
Eric Davis is RAVS director.
RAVS is a program of The Fund for Animals and The Humane Society of the United States.
