A five-year dream was finally realised for the Vryheid Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) when they opened the doors of their newly-built clinic on August 24. The motivation behind the clinic is to bring a cost-effective service to the community, as well as preventing cruelty, which is the main goal of the SPCA. But there are still a lot of plans and dreams to expand the clinic to its full potential. At this stage, the clinic is only performing sterilizations, but will help with smaller emergencies if they are able to. Unfortunately, they cannot deal with specialised procedures like orthopaedic or dentistry, since they do not have the equipment for these procedures as yet. The aim of the clinic is to control populations by sterilization among animals and to offer primary animal healthcare, which will in turn eliminate the core of the SPCA’s biggest problem – cruelty to animals. Doctor Anel Duvel is the fully qualified, dedicated and passionate veterinarian at the clinic who is responsible for the health of the animals. This has also been a dream of Stephan Vickers (chairperson) and Antoinette Ries (treasurer) when they took over the management in 2016 to have a permanent veterinarian on the premises. Doctor Duvel has mastered the finer art of the procedure of sterilization, which compares to the United States of America’s SPCA organisations. The clinic will be open strictly from Monday to Friday from 9am until 4pm by appointment only. The management of the SPCA would like to emphasise that their main objective is not to euthanize animals, but to prevent animal cruelty – and this includes all animals, not only dogs and cats.
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