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- Emancipet’s new facility in Houston provides low-cost pet care, including spaying and neutering.
- Dogs and cats wait their turn at the clinic’s operating room.
- Justin Gonzales, one of the clinic’s staffers, performs surgery on a dog.
- Magan Gonzales works with a dog at the clinic’s operating room.
- Sarah Thompson and her dog Bear wait their turn in the clinic’s waiting room.
- Emancipet also provides services for cats.
Houston's East End has a brand new low-cost pet clinic and one of its goals is to help decrease the overpopulation of stray animals in that part of town.
The Austin-based non-profit Emancipet started its Houston operation in 2015 using a 48-feet customized trailer as a temporary location.
Kelly McCann, vice president of Emancipet Houston, says that now they have much more room in their brick and mortar facility, located at the 900 block of South Wayside Drive.
"The 2,800 square feet allows us to have three fully functioning exam rooms, we have a large and comfortable waiting room for our clients," McCann said.
Spaying and neutering can cost hundreds of dollars, but Emancipet does them for fees that range from $35 to $65.
McCann is hopeful that will help reduce the overpopulation of stray animals, which officials with the City of Houston have estimated in the hundreds of thousands, with many of them located in the East End.
Emancipet gets funding through grants, fundraisers and donations.
That allows it to provide affordable pet care, which helps Houstonians like Sarah Thompson, a nursing student who owns two dogs and a cat.
"I know that I’m not going to be out a significant portion of my, like, minimal income at the moment in order to take care of them," says Thompson.
The clinic also places microchips, with information about the owner, on the pets they treat.