Matching Gift Challenge Met!

August 30, 2021
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EXCITING NEWS! Friends, thank you for coming together over the last several months to make an incredibly exciting thing happen for homeless senior pets! We had an amazing matching gift offered to us by our friends, John and Rita Canning: If we could raise $75,000 towards the purchase of the veterinary equipment needed for our upcoming in-house vet clinic, they would match every single dollar. And thanks to your generosity and enthusiasm, we have successfully met their challenge and every single dollar will be matched! Thank you!!!

We are so incredibly excited for this, as our adoption center is operating at full capacity, yet veterinary care for our senior pets is more complicated than ever to access. Today alone, our staff and volunteers will spend 10-12 hours transporting our senior pets to and from veterinary appointments. We can no longer easily access the veterinary care that we could pre-COVID. And for every day a rescued senior pet waits to see the vet, we lose a day that they could be comfortable. That they could be healthier. That they could be ready for adoption. With an in-house veterinary clinic just for Young at Heart’s use, our senior pets will be able to be seen “on-demand” and get the care and comfort they need immediately.

Our future vet clinic will be named the “Foglia Senior Pet Veterinary Center”, named for the generous lead donation from Pat and Vince Foglia for the construction of the vet clinic building during our capital campaign. With their generous donation, we were able to build the vet clinic at the same time as the adoption center in 2019, with plans to get the in-house vet clinic up and running in 2020. But then Covid struck, and all plans for the in-house veterinary clinic were put on hold as we shifted to sheer survival mode. We are so incredibly grateful to have had the support of you, our amazing friends, through all of this pandemic so that we could continue to care for the senior pets that needed us. And thanks to you and your amazing support over the last 18 months, we are so excited that the vet clinic plans are finally back on track!

With the funds for the equipment now secured, we can fully equip the vet clinic with the state of the art equipment that will enable us to provide the best care for the senior dogs and cats at Young at Heart. Like all things post-pandemic, the lead time for equipment right now is longer than in normal times, so it will take several months for some of the equipment to arrive and be installed. The vet clinic campaign is not complete by any means, as we continue the last phase of the campaign to raise the funds to staff our own in-house vet and veterinary technicians. But it is our hope that our on-site clinic will be fully equipped and we’ll be ready for a vet and support staff in early 2022.

Thank you to each and every friend who helped us reach this very important milestone in our vet clinic campaign. And thank you to John & Rita Canning and to Pat & Vince Foglia for your incredible generosity to the senior pets of Young at Heart. And we are so very grateful to each and every one of you who continue to believe that homeless senior pets deserve happily ever afters, too!

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