[The 350k route from Victoria to Gold River and our first spay/neuter trip of 2018! Not pictured: the longer routes for team members coming all the way from Ontario to lend their skills :)]

I’ve written about the Canadian Animal Assistance Team before and I know I certainly will again! It’s a charity that’s near and dear to my heart and I am so proud to have been a member for the past four years. Founded in 2005 in response to the desperate need for volunteer veterinary care in the US following Hurricane Katrina, CAAT now focuses on providing veterinary services to rural and under-served communities in Canada and abroad. There are many communities with little or no access to veterinary services and CAAT is able to provide them with temporary clinics which focus on spaying, neutering, and vaccination in order to improve both the health of the community’s animals but also the health of the community as a whole.

This year, our first trip is to the Tsaxana reserve in Gold River, Vancouver Island, BC. We will be convoying up from Victoria (picking up more team members in Nanaimo) on Friday, setting up our temporary clinic in the Wah-meesh Gymnasium, and generally preparing ourselves for the flurry of spays and neuters on Saturday and Sunday before we head home Monday morning.

I’ll be the designated blogger for this trip, so please follow the CAAT Blog and/or CAAT’s official Facebook page for updates, stories, profiles of our amazing volunteers, and of course, tons and tons of photos! And please consider supporting CAAT in your own life, whether through donation, volunteering, or simply spreading the word! Their official website is http://www.caat-canada.org and membership is just $50CAD annually!

And of course, in the immortal words of Bob Barker, please…spay and neuter your pets!