Emancipet Houston opens permanent location
Emancipet, Houston’s nonprofit low-cost veterinary clinic, opens its new brick and mortar site in the East End on Saturday, Dec. 3. The much-anticipated new clinic at 910 South Wayside Drive has greater capacity to serve pets and people than the clinic’s former home, a 48-foot customized trailer at Neighborhood Centers—Ripley House.
Emancipet’s mission is to make spay/neuter services and veterinary care affordable and accessible to all pet owners. Since opening in spring 2015, Emancipet Houston has served 9,000 clients, including providing more than 4,000 spay/neuter surgeries and 5,000 visits for vaccinations, microchipping, flea/heartworm medication, and other healthy pet services.
The new clinic will allow Emancipet East End to serve up to 40 percent more clients and decrease wait times. The new location is 2,800 square feet, with three exam rooms, larger areas for surgery, staff, and animals; and a large waiting room and restrooms for clients.
With the move, Emancipet East End is also expanding its service days and hours and will now be open every Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. The check-in for surgery appointments begins at 8 a.m. and the clinic is open for healthy pet services from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.
“With our new, permanent location on Wayside, we will deepen our roots in Houston’s East End,” says Kelly McCann, vice president and executive director of Emancipet Houston. “Our goal is to keep pets and people together, and providing low-cost, high-quality veterinary services accessible to everyone helps us achieve that.”
The initiative to bring Emancipet to Houston in 2015 was spearheaded by City Council Member Gallegos and made possible with the support of then-Mayor Annise Parker, former Mayor Pro-Tem and now Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, and Council Member Oliver Pennington.
A major charitable gift of $89,000 from philanthropist Jan Duncan through Houston PetSet, facilitated by co-presidents and prominent Houston animal welfare supporters Tena Lundquist Faust and Tama Lundquist, helped fund Emancipet East End’s new location. Emancipet Houston was also supported by the ASPCA® (The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals®) and other individual, corporate, and foundation donors.
Emancipet is continuing fundraising efforts to enable it to open a second location in Houston, where the need for spay/neuter and low-cost, high-quality veterinary services remains high.
Emancipet is an expanding national network of high-quality, low-cost clinics in Austin, Killeen, and Plugerville, and will open in Philadelphia in early 2017. The organization offers training programs to animal welfare organizations nationwide, and advocates for strategies and public policy that improve the lives of pets and people in underserved communities.
For more information, see www.emancipet.org/houston.
