- The City of Kingsville's Animal Care works with Texas A&M University-Kingsville's Vet Tech Program every semester.
- Students use dogs and cats as hands on experience to get ready to work at a veterinary clinic after graduation.
- The animals the students care for are mostly strays and brought to better health and condition.
- The animals are provided daily check ins, medication, x-rays, and spaying and neutering services.
As graduation approaches for college students, one group of students at Texas A&M University- Kingsville dedicated their semester to giving animals a new chance at life. They worked with the City of Kingsville to take in some dogs and cats from the city's animal shelter and help them get adopted.
This semester, seven dogs and nine cats from the City of Kingsville Animal Shelter went to TAMUK - not to study, but to teach. They were teaching tools for students at the school's Vet Tech program.
Students like seniors Sylvia Rodriguez and Chelsey Johnson were able to get some hands on experience on what it takes to work in veterinary medicine.
"We'll do intensive care work, we also monitor anesthesia, dental procedures, we will take diagnostic procedures like taking x-rays, we're what a nurse is to a doctor, except for a veterinarian. We're the right hand person," Rodriguez said.
The animals that were taken in this semester were worked on every day for three to four months multiple times a day, but the care they are given didn't just benefit the 40 students in the program. It also gave their 4-legged classmates a second chance at health.
"They all had different stories on how they got to the shelter, whether they were on the streets and got picked up or someone got it and then surrendered it," Johnson said.
The program and the city started working together about seven years ago and over the course of that time, students have helped care for over 180 cats and over 150 dogs.
The Vet Tech's in training will provide free vaccines, medications and spaying and neutering throughout the course of their class that ultimately save adopters a pretty penny in the long run.
"Yes, you're paying $10 but all these other costs are going to amount to several hundreds of dollars. When we get a Vet Tech dog coming in, it's fully vetted so it's still $10 but it's fully vetted," City of Kingsville Health Director Emilio Garcia said.
And although most animals that were worked on this semester were adopted, there's more where they came from. Three dogs and two cats are at the City of Kingsville's animal shelter hoping for a forever home, just in time for the holidays.
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