| |
WESTIE
OWNERS: THE
WESTIE FOUNDATION NEEDS YOUR HELP!!
A key part of the mission of the Westie Foundation
is “…to
further develop and communicate information regarding
the health, care, breeding and quality of life of Westies
to Westie owners, Westie breeders and veterinarians.” By “Westie
owners”, we mean ALL Westie owners, and not just
Westie owners who belong to
the national Westie club or one of the many regional clubs. It’s
estimated that well over 90% (and probably over 95%) of
all Westies in the U.S. belong to non-club members. Reaching
those Westie owners at a reasonable
cost is a very daunting challenge. Similarly, according
to the American Veterinary Medical Association,
there are more than 73,000 large and small animal veterinarians,
whose practices includes cows, horses, birds, reptiles,
exotics, cats and dogs. To be effective and
efficient with our limited resources, we want
to direct our efforts toward canine veterinarians, and
if possible, vets with some experience diagnosing and
treating Westie health concerns, especially a topic dermatitis.
One of the ways we hope to reach more veterinarians
(who might in turn enable us to reach more Westie pet owners)
is through a very important project we are initiating called
the Westie Docs Program. We hope to gather
the names and contact information on vets with experience
diagnosing and treating Westie health concerns
who are referred by WFA donors and national and
regional Westie club members. Our plan is to put
the vet’s names and contact information (address,
phone number and email address) up on our web site. Naturally,
we would want the person recommending a specific
vet to confirm with that vet that they have no objection
to being included in our Westie Docs Program on our web
site with their name and contact information. We
will then follow up with the vets to get written
permission to post any or all of this contact information
Our goal is to have at least 100 vets in
our Westie Docs Program by July 1, 2006, and eventually
to have more than 500 vets on our list.
The purposes of this program is three-fold:
– Be a source of useful information
for first-time Westie owners to hopefully locate a vet
in their area who has
experience in diagnosing and treating Westie health concerns.
– Enable the Westie Foundation
to provide information to vets and Westie owners on medical
research for Westie health concerns that we are funding,
as well as Westie health information we provide through
our seminars and newsletters.
– Finally, we could ask the vets
to assist us in obtaining DNA/blood samples or cases
for some of our research
projects that have need of them. We could also ask those
vets who are willing to provide WFA brochures
and newsletters to their Westie clients.
The Westie Docs Program is an extremely important
project for the Foundation. We hope all of our donors,
as well as members of the national and regional clubs,
will assist us by suggesting vets for this program. Please
email me waynekompare@verizon.net
or snail mail me (4836 Bay Shore Rd., Sarasota, FL 34234)
the names and
contact information on suggested vets for this important
program.
Thanks again for your continued support and generosity.
Wayne Kompare
|
|
