The Habersham County Fairgrounds was lined once again with cars on Saturday, but not for COVID-19 vaccinations. Planned PEThood of Georgia returned to Habersham to offer free veterinary services to families with financial need, whose pets needed life-saving and important preventative veterinary care.
Habersham County Animal Care and Control delivered “golden tickets” to people in areas hardest hit by financial hardship in the county. Those tickets would make sure they had first access to veterinary care at the clinic.
“They [HCACC] went out to the areas that are hardest hit . . . [by economic struggles], and personally handed these out to people who had something tragic happen in the past year,” Tanya Weaver, Planned PEThood’s Transportation Coordinator says. “They lost their jobs because of COVID, their hours were cut for some reason, they were not able to take care of their pets— they hit them first to make sure that they were able to be seen today.”
HCACC Director Madi Nix gave other citizens experiencing financial struggles the opportunity to reach out to the shelter for help, offering entry to the clinic on a case-by-case basis.
The Oct. 16 event served 200 local animals and their families at the drive-up clinic. Planned PEThood provided vaccines, microchips, flea and tick treatment, dewormer and spay/neuter vouchers for pets to get fixed free of charge at Planned PEThood’s Duluth location.
“We are so blessed to be able to partner with an agency such as Planned PEThood to do community outreach to our wonderful citizens,” Nix says. “We love being able to give back to the community. It’s what keeps us going day by day, and we just can’t thank everyone enough that showed, and we cannot wait to do this again.”
