How a common love for animals brings the community together

DAWN CARTER REPORTER Part 2 This edition, we continue to look at several community individuals who have a common love for animals and their efforts to make a difference. See last Friday’s edition of the Free-Lance for Part 1. • Barbara “Babs” Martin: Artist, performer and Director of the Okmulgee County Humane Society Martin has a background in non profit organizations. “I worked a lot with high risk or at-risk youth as well as first time college students and programs for low income, first time college students and all of that. So that’s kind of where I come from, which gave me sort of the passion for this particular position.” For Martin, the journey to becoming a director began as a trip to the animal shelter with a photographer friend. “We lost our cat,” she said. “He died in June and my Westie was just very depressed and having problems and just so sad ... my friend Kiersten is the volunteer photographer for the Humane Society and she was going one day. I said, ‘Well, hey, can I come with you so that I can look at some of the dogs and see if there’s something that might be a fit for my Westie?’” It was then that Martin found out the director at that time was retiring. “So I went home, filled out the application online. Got a call the next couple of days, got an interview and was hired.” From that point on, Babs has hit the ground running. “I wanted something that was meaningful,” she said. “I wanted something that was a mission. And I just fell in love with the animals, and my husband died about four years ago. And since then, I’ve noticed that animals are very, very receptive towards me. They just love me. I think they’re picking up on some of that grief and that loss and so they’re filling a need within me while I’m saving them so it’s really cool.” The Humane Society’s mission is to save animals that are brought in by the animal control officer. To bring more attention to the animals in their care, Martin does this through several different ways such as social media posts and meet and greets. “We have a little lobby,” Martin said, explaining, “so they get to meet the dog there or the cat in our lobby. Sometimes, we go outside for a walk depending upon the weather ... if the animal is already in foster care, it gives the potential adopter a chance to ask the foster questions and get that in depth knowledge that the foster would be the only one to have since they’ve been living with the animal. So yeah, we just kind of see how it goes. Sometimes, we actually prefer this if they have other animals. We would like for them to bring their other animals to the meet and greet and see how they get along. If they have children, we’d like for them to bring them just to see if the child is getting along with the animal, the animal gets along with the child, because that’s all very important.” It’s important because the Humane Society and the animal shelter all run against time to save these animals. Once an animal is picked up from animal control, it has 72 hours to be claimed before it is euthanized. If they have room, the Humane Society can “pull” or claim the animal from the shelter area which will then give the animal 14 days until a foster or someone who can adopt, is found. For the month of November, Okmulgee County Humane Society claimed 15 animals from the city shelter. Nine were adopted, five were transported, and seven were fostered. For December, the Okmulgee Humane Society took claim of 25 animals from the city shelter, with 20 being adopted and five going to foster homes. Martin says the adoption numbers are higher because in addition to placing animals from the shelter, they also adopt those that are in boarding as well as those in foster homes. Although Martin just started her position in October, she definitely has several goals in mind. “In the shelter, there are 10 kennels total,” she said. “The Humane Society has four ... Having our own facility with a lot more kennels and a lot more capacity to save more animals, I’m picturing something really fabulous and fancy. We’d like to have some old washing stations so that we could actually bathe the dogs and I picture it like ... those walk in tubs you know with the door. That way the big dogs can go in and we can get them bathed and then one that’s a little bit like chest level, waist level for us to put the little dogs in and get them bathed and a supply room where we can hold a lot of food and blankets.” • Dr. Jennifer Livesay: Owner/Operator of Dripping Springs Pet Hospital Dr. Livesay got her start in biology and science research but feeling like she was not making enough day to day difference, she decided to switch career tracks and went down the ‘medicine pathway.’ “I’ve been really happy with that decision,” she said. “For me personally, I like being able to see, when an animal comes in with something wrong and then by the time that they leave, be feeling better or be on the path to feeling better. And for me, that is very rewarding. And I really also enjoy the relationships I’m able to build with owners as we try and navigate and figure out what’s going on with their pet and get them feeling better because that’s really what everyone is all focused on. “The owners care about their pets and I care about trying to figure out what’s going on with their pets and get them feeling better,” she said. “And so it’s really nice when we can get that dialogue in and team approach going.” Dr. Livesay has been a veterinarian for nine years and was a veterinary assistant for 10 years. She purchased Dripping Springs about three years ago from Dr. Graham when he retired. Dr. Livesay says her biggest passion is taking care of pets and her goal is to get and keep them well. “They don’t have a voice to tell us what’s going on with them when something’s wrong,” she said. “And so, I like being able to try and help figure out that piece you know, figure out what is wrong and to advocate for them to try and help when they don’t have a way to say it for themselves ... I’ve worked very closely with the Humane Society in a lot of aspects so in all of their adoptable animals, almost all of them. I see for regular testing, rabies vaccinations and spays and neuters also in any health issues. “The Humane Society is working on partnering with the city and introducing a trap, neuter, release program or what they call a TNR program. And there is a huge overpopulation of outdoor cats in the city as well as many others. And there’s a lot of research that has gone into this from a lot of different groups, showing that if you don’t control the breeding rates in those animals, then even if you take animals out of the outdoor population, they’re just going to reproduce to refill that space. And so the TNR program is aimed at trapping cats, getting them either spayed or neutered or getting them sterilized. We’re testing for diseases as well to make sure that we have a very high prevalence of feline leukemia and feline AIDS fit in our stray cat population normally, so trying to identify if the sample is a carrier for that because we don’t want to keep that going.” Dr. Livesay has a varied and extensive background. She has worked in emergency medicine, multiple shelters, long term relief for Tulsa animal welfare and she’s worked with the Humane Society of Tulsa. Dr. Livesay also started up and served two years with the Broken Arrow animal shelter’s spay and neuter medical program as well as private practice. As a resource to service the pet community better, Dripping Springs Pet Hospital is open on Saturdays as well as throughout the week and that was an intentional choice for Dr. Livesay right along with the name of the clinic. “You see a lot of things that are vet hospitals. I wanted to name it ‘pet hospital’ because that’s animal-centered and not me-centered,” she said.