Teamwork makes the pet ownership dream work.
Later this fall, eastern Osceola County lowincome residents will be able to find pet care they normally wouldn’t find or afford, and Harmony High School veterinary care students can get the internship hours they need to leave school fully certified.
Thanks to a partnership of Osceola County, the Osceola School District, SNiP-It of Central Florida and PetSmart Charities, Harmony Vet Clinic, a low-cost pet care option, is set to open on the school campus. Local leaders held a ribboncutting Monday.
The final piece was a PetSmart Charities grant of $150,000 awarded to the county to purchase equipment needed and offset operational costs.
While it waits on a couple more pieces of equipment, like an x-ray machine, the clinic is set to fully open later this fall, Harmony High Principal Jim Hickey said.
The school has had the tools to open a large clinic, such as examination tables, anesthetic machines, and surgical packs, but it largely went unused — until the local partnership to open this clinic came about. Classroom space in Building 6 was converted into the clinic, with plenty of teaching space to spare.
The clinic will help Harmony’s students in the Veterinary Assistant magnet program get the toughest piece of their certification — the 500 practical hours working in a clinic.
“We could teach Animal Sciences I, II and III, but once they reached the fourth year, we’d have to send them out to vet clinics to get a spot to get their hours,” Hickey said. “We didn’t know what they’d tell the kids. The pipeline would just stop and kids would think about leaving the program.
“Now we can keep them on campus and know they’ll be able to get their hours and leave here with their certification when they graduate.”
State Rep. Kristen Arrington is on the board of SNiP-It, a low-cost clinic that’s offered spay and neuter services in Kissimmee for years, and said the new clinic will provide the specialize training to do perform the procedures a clinic like SNiP-It needs.
“A special vet has to be trained to do 30 or 40 spay/ neuter surgeries a day. We can train them here on the spot,” she said.
The drive to do this began about a year ago, when Ricky Booth, who himself has an Animal Sciences degree and works in the cattle industry, was a School Board member. He’s now the district 5 county commissioner.
“It’s great to have this vet assistant’s program here at Harmony, this clinic is a win for everyone involved,” he said. “Pet owners on the east side of town will now have a low cost option. The county wins, we hope low-income families will utilize this service and not relinquish their pets (to Animal Services).”
Osceola County Animal Services Director Kim Staton said the clinic fills a clear local need.
“We’re dealing with pet owners who were struggling to get pets the care they need, and students struggling to get the training hours they need,” she said. “With school’s help and the District’s help, we were able to do this in the midst of a pandemic.
The clinic will operate part-time, three days per week. The clinic won’t compete directly with other local veterinary practices; there will be income requirements in order for residents to access the lowcost services. The clinic contact email is snipitw2@ gmail.com.
