Hope Animal Hospital in Jefferson County Missouri. A state of the art Veterinary Animal Hospital.

Hope Animal Hospital’s H.O.P.E. Fund
(Helping Orphaned Pets Everyday)

How it Works:

The HOPE fund pays for medicine and supplies at cost to provide care to abused, abandoned, or otherwise homeless pets. The employees gladly provide care at no cost and Hope Animal Hospital collects no boarding or hospitalization fees. We certainly cannot save every pet that needs our care, but we do try to help some of the neediest patients. Cases that we take on may come from a local shelter or rescue, from a client that cannot afford to take care of their pet and relinquishes it to us, a stray that is injured, or an abuse case. We take on cases based on the patient needs, the money we have available, and the care we can provide.

How You Can Help:

Hope Animal Hospital hosts two Bar-B-Qs per year to help fund our work. These are held on a Saturday in the spring and the fall. During the Bar-B-Qs we hold raffles for prizes we acquire through donations from drug suppliers or private donations.

If you have something you think is suitable to raffle please bring it by and we will save it for our raffle or donate it to another charity.

Another way we support the fund is through donations made throughout the year and during the Bar-B-Q. We have many great supporters who donate money to help our causes.

Dozens of Pets Have Been Helped But Here Are a Few Stories to Illustrate the Fund's Importance:

Saving Grace

One day we got a frantic call from someone about a stray cat that possibly had been hit by a car and was being attacked by flies. We cannot save every pet but this story tore at our hearts. Lea rushed to the scene and thought she was too late. She found a cat lying in a mud puddle surrounded by flies. When she touched her she realized that the cat was alive. When Lea returned with the cat an exam showed the pet was very old. She had very few teeth. How had this elderly cat survived so long? The person that called us had seen her around for months. Not only did she have a maggot infestation her leg was shattered and her pelvis fractured. Her kidneys are also not functioning well. We named her Grace. She fought to live and we started nursing her back to health. She improved greatly but sadly one day she went down hill and we lost her. Although she passed away it gave us great comfort to know that she died warm, with pain medication, all the food she wanted, and most importantly she was loved.

Grace, we still miss you.

Where There’s a Willow There’s a Way

One day a pet was presented to us for a broken leg. Unfortunately, the caretaker said the other caretaker had broken it in response to the pet biting.

Of course we took her on. We named her Willow. Her break was severe enough to require specialist care. Our fund paid for all her pain medication and routine care but we needed more. A special fund raising effort raised enough to pay for her orthopedic repair. The specialist discounted the care and did it before we had all the money to pay for it. She was adopted by my brother who named her Punctuality, Punk for short. My Mom says Punk suits her. What a wild woman she is. She runs and jumps with abandon and is in love with my brother.

Petunia’s Pain in the Behind

Petunia’s newest owners got her from a garage sale. They didn’t really know how to take care of a rabbit and they weren’t financially stable enough to take on a pet. Impulse buying got the better of them. Two weeks later they found a small wound and came in to have it evaluated. That small wound ended up being a large open infected wound covered by hair. The family unable to care for such a large problem turned her over to us. She is now getting the right diet and the care she needs.

Lilly and Pickles and Their Lucky Rabbits Feet

Lilly came to us first. A Good Samaritan brought Lilly in after her friend asked her to come and help her cut the bunnies’ nails. As you can see Lilly needed more than a nail trim. Lilly had been attacked thru the bottom or her outdoor hutch. Some of her toes were missing, others were so damaged they had mummified on her feet. Lilly’s owner’s husband would not allow his wife to bring Lilly in to be seen by a veterinarian. The Good Samaritan went home and talked to her husband and they agreed they had to do something. Their big hearts got Lilly here but their budget did not allow of the extensive surgery required, so I called Lilly’s owner and asked her to turn her over to us. We begged for the other rabbit to be turned in as well, but the family waited until another attack occurred before they allowed Pickles to come to us for help. Pickles was missing toes when she got to us and had a large laceration on her side from an attack. Some people would say they had unlucky feet, but we prefer to think that their Lucky feet brought them to us. Pickles was placed in a new home by Missouri House Rabbit Society and Lilly has taken up permanent residence here at Hope Animal Hospital and recently married her husband Lenny. Feel free to ask to visit her.

A Snowbank is No Place for a Puppy

An urgent call to see a puppy that probably had broken bones was place by a women that does rescue. The puppy was at another veterinarian clinic where it had been turned in by someone who found the puppy on the side of a highway in a snowbank. If the rescue did not take the puppy they were sending to an uncertain future at the pound. What a cute puppy that smiled at us despite 2 broken legs and a broken pelvis. The rescue that brought him in could not finance the surgery so we agreed to care for him while we facilitated another rescue to help. Specialist surgery was needed. This little guy known at the time as Freeway or, as I liked to call him Road Apple, found his own guardian angel here at Hope Animal Hospital. Micki and her husband Keith agreed to finance Freeway’s extensive surgery. Of course, with his sweet demeanor he wiggled his way into their home. That cute, docile little puppy is now a Tasmanian devil named Ozzy who needs an hour walk daily or someone pays the price.

Ozzy definitely can still pull off the innocent
puppy lying on the deck act brilliantly.