To all outward appearances, Dr. Ashley Smith’s career mirrors that of thousands of veterinarians around the state and across the country. Every day, she and her raft of medical assistants treat animals in various states of distress.
Almost anything can and does walk through the door, so flexibility is key. The hours are long, and the fluffers keep on a’coming, but Smith doesn’t seem to mind despite the physical fatigue and emotional exhaustion her day sometimes entails.
“No matter what you’re doing, this is hard emotional work,” she said. “There’s not always a great outcome, but you can’t just see the negative every time something like that happens because you’re going to get burned out fast. I see it as a blessing that these animals end up in my clinic because I am able to help them.”
Every vet can probably relate to what Smith goes through, but few can imagine it at the scale she deals with on a typical day. As one of the staff vets at Kitties and Kanines Pet Resource Center in Fort Smith, Smith serves a unique population of dogs and cats, those without a home or whose owners cannot afford veterinary care elsewhere. As the organization’s only full-time DVM among four that serve the clinic, her caseload is staggering.
“Patient-wise, we see about eight hundred to eight hundred and fifty animals a month in surgery, or about ten thousand a year, and we see probably over a thousand a month when it comes to our wellness patients,” she says. “My first year here, I probably did about five thousand surgeries.”
The volume comes from multiple sources. Founded in 2009 as Kitties and Kanines Veterinary Clinic and rebranded just this year, the clinic has steadily formed relationships with local rescue organizations, seventeen of them at last count, which account for half of their four-legged patients. The other half is a mix of low-income pet owners and Good Samaritans who bring in an injured animal they’ve encountered but don’t intend to keep.
All of this adds up to keep the clinic’s two wellness exam rooms, surgical suites, and in-house pharmacy humming.
“We charge a greatly reduced scale for our services,” Smith says. “Our rescue partners get a discount, and our general clients pay an incredibly reduced amount. We don’t ask for proof of income or anything; if someone comes in with a dog or cat that needs help, we treat them.”
With its new rebrand, the practice has expanded into other services, such as public education on responsible pet ownership. Another service Smith is particularly excited about is the establishment of a community pantry for pet food and supplies.
“Obviously, we make food available, but we also stock other things like collars, leashes, bowls, beds, anything a pet owner would need,” she says. “Our goal is to keep pets in homes, whether that means giving them food, giving them a bed, giving them a leash. We try to keep that pantry stocked and we’ve got it almost to one hundred percent donations to save on costs. If a couple of local businesses have bags of food that are busted or returned items they can’t put back on the shelf, they’ll sometimes contact us. We’re really grateful.
“Even if someone donates something that can’t go in our pantry, we find somebody who needs it, whether it’s giving it to one of our local rescue groups or holding onto it until a person walks through the door with an elderly animal and we’re like, ‘Hey, we’ve got these pet stairs, is this something that you could use?'”
Smith is so passionate about the pet food pantry that she’s been known to call in favors if supplies run low.
“Keeping our pet food pantry stocked is a personal mission because I hate seeing animals go hungry,” she says. “I am constantly keeping my eyes on our pantry and begging people, even my family, to donate. When it gets low, if we haven’t had any recent food donations, I call up my mom and my sister, and I say, ‘Hey, can y’all Amazon me a couple of bags?’ They’re always like, ‘Yes, of course.'”
Hearing Smith talk about her mission with such conviction shows she is living out a ministry as much as a career. But for all the zeal she has today, most of her formative years were spent not knowing such a career was even possible.
“I never really knew that vets could be in nonprofits. I didn’t know that existed,” she says. “In college, I was looking for something to do community service-wise, and I found this group that rescued cats, and they would take those cats to get spayed at this low-cost nonprofit clinic. I started volunteering there throughout college and learned that this was definitely what I wanted to do.”
After graduating from Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock and the University of Arkansas, Smith attended veterinary school at Mississippi State University, where she focused her education on the areas of animal medicine that would be most utilized in her future practice.
“I wanted to be the best surgeon I could be to provide resources to people who couldn’t afford to go to a specialist,” she says. “I thought if I could get really good at it, I could do it for them. I set a goal to get a hundred surgeries before I graduated; most students do twenty or thirty, and I surpassed that goal. In fact, I got to five hundred before I graduated.”
Meanwhile, Smith’s classmates didn’t know what to make of her career goals; out of a class of ninety-two veterinary students, she was the only one who had her sights on providing nonprofit care.
“Most of them said, ‘You’re never going to make any money. How are you ever going to pay your debt back?'” she says. “Luckily, the government has a program called public service loan forgiveness. If you work for a nonprofit for ten years, all your student loans are forgiven.”
Donations are now needed to help the clinic replace some of its surgical apparatus and medical equipment. “We’re pushing hard right now for that,” Smith says. “Because we’re so high-volume in our surgeries, our general medical equipment, our instruments, our surgical sterile drapes, all wear out quickly. That’s probably our biggest fundraising push right now.”
Kitties and Kanines Pet Resource Center accepts monetary donations and supplies and utilizes numerous volunteers. It has also begun to host various events to bring attention to the clinic and its mission, as well as to serve animals and their owners. Upcoming events include a Halloween party on October 26 from 4-7 p.m.
“We’ll also be accepting donations for our pet food pantry and our ‘Spay it Forward’ fund,” Smith says. “That is a fund we use to help cover the cost of spay and neuter when someone cannot pay their entire bill.” The Halloween party will also include a pet costume contest, a photo booth, and cats available for adoption.
To learn more or get involved, visit Kitties and Kanines Pet Resource Center at 4300 Phoenix Avenue, Fort Smith, online, or call 479.434.4740.
Visit Kitties and Kanines Pet Resource Center
