Pet Clinic Opens In Seattle, Homeless Counterparts Included

Seattle Veterinary Outreach is a mobile team providing pet veterinary services to homeless and low-income individuals and families in the Puget Sound area. Their mission is to provide compassionate mobile veterinary care so homeless people and their pets can thrive together. This service is reserved for pets owned by people who are homeless or on low incomes.

A partnership is in the works to keep pets as healthy as their human parts. Cool thing, it’s all free. A combination clinic with medical staff taking care of both. You can pay for all of this with grants from Seattle King County Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Seattle Veterinary Outreach provides services and support to keep homeless people and their companion animals safe, healthy, and together.

“By keeping pets healthy, firstly they are there for their human companions, their owners you might say, and secondly, the pets actually serve a purpose by encouraging them to take care of themselves, we see people who may not be vaccinated or get vaccinated because they want to be there for their pets,” explains veterinarian Hanna Ekström. It’s a win-win for low-income or homeless people and their pets.

Veterinarian Hanna Ekstrom said they regularly provide free pet care and are now also working with others to take advantage of the great opportunity to also provide the parents of these pets with the care they need. Since starting her nonprofit organization in 2019, Ekstrom has provided veterinary care to more than 1,000 pets of homeless and low-income people in Seattle – and her practice is growing rapidly.