Nevis Animal Speak is filling a void on Nevis: care for small animals.

Yello caught up with April Bowen at Nevis Animal Speak to learn more about the Paws for a Cause clinic.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m a licensed veterinary nurse. I moved here 10 years ago to work at Ross [University School of Veterinary Medicine] on St Kitts, and in the meantime, I moved to Nevis and saw the need for veterinary care here.

What is Nevis Animal Speak’s Paws for a Cause clinic?

Our Paws for a Cause veterinary clinic and was opened on 2 April 2019. We tried for quite a long time to get something going on Nevis, and we’re happy to finally be here. We’ve been very well received by the community, and we’re starting off really slow and small and growing as we can.

We started off doing more education, working with children things like that and just trying to educate the general population about animal care. It was tough because veterinary care wasn’t really available, so you would teach people how to care for their animals, but then they don’t have the resources with which to do that.

Then the government asked us to help control the dog population here. There are a lot of problems with unowned and stray dogs running around and getting into livestock and trash. Farmers have become very angry about their livestock being killed by dogs, whether they are owned or stray or totally wild. So, we were asked to help with that population control through spay and neuter. That’s going to be the main focus of our clinic – spay and neuter. We are going to provide general veterinary care as well because that’s also needed for small animals on this island.

Right now we are doing occasional spay days. We just had a couple of spay days over the past few months. We do about 30 spays and neuters on animals at a time, mostly on dogs but a few cats in there too. We’re also open every day for general medicine. We have a rotating visiting vet programme as well, so we don’t have one vet on staff here, so we’re doing kind of a working holiday.

Do you work with students from Ross University?

For our spay days, we’re working with a group called BETA at the moment; they’re an all student volunteer organisation. They come here and volunteer their whole day, and some of the surgeons from the university come as well.

Does Nevis Animal Speak take in stray or rescue animals?

We do not do rescue or sheltering. However, if someone were to find an injured cat or dog, we would, of course, give it as much care as we could and try to find an owner.  A lot of people come to us asking if we can take in animals. We can’t take them in, but we try to give them some kind of resource. We will help them find a home by posting on Facebook or here in our clinic, connecting them with people who maybe want an animal.

So there really wasn’t any kind of small animal veterinary care before Nevis Animal Speak?

There is a government vet at Prospect, and there are two veterinarians. They are employed by the government to take care of livestock and livestock issues.

Not small domestic pets?

That’s not what they’re employed by the government for, however, they are allowed to work with small animals in that clinic as they see fit. So there have been some small animal services for people here in the past, but that’s not the focus. I think there’s enough need and enough customer demand for a clinic devoted entirely to small animals.

You can also find pet care items at Nevis Animal Speak, such as dog toys and collars. For more information on what the clinic is doing, visit their official website. https://nevisanimalspeak.org/our-mission