Domestic animals have been used in therapy and as emotional support companions for humans for decades, and for good reason.
“Interacting with animals has been shown to decrease levels of cortisol (a stress-related hormone) and lower blood pressure,” suggests a 2018 story from the National Institutes of Health. “Other studies have found that animals can reduce loneliness, increase feelings of social support, and boost your mood.”
Those benefits extend to those with fenced yards and indoor plumbing, as well as those experiencing homelessness in the community.
The mission of the Companion Animal Medical Project is to “ease the burden on those experiencing homelessness or facing other debilitation financial hardships by providing veterinary care and supplies to their companion animals,” reads a description on CAMP’s website.
Johanna Johnson-Weinberg started CAMP in 2020 after seeing a need to help people who couldn’t pay for veterinary services. At some animal shelters, people could surrender their animals in order to get them care they needed – but then the animal would be put up for adoption to another family.
“To me that felt so backwards,” Johnson-Weinberg told the Source Weekly. “There’s a lot of programs that are like that – in order for your animal to get care, you have to give it away or give it to someone else, and that just didn’t make sense to me. So, I thought, maybe if we could offer this type of assistance, maybe we could help people keep their pets.”
For Johnson-Weinberg, the mission was about helping pets, along with their humans.
“I centered CAMP around, how can we treat the pet and the person together — what do we need to do to support this family that’s experiencing crisis through compassionate and empathetic care?”
CAMP held its first clinic in February 2020 at the Bend Methodist Church, where it quickly became clear that the houseless population was most in need of the services CAMP set out to provide. “There wasn’t a program like us before — so I started one,” Johnson-Weinberg said. When the pandemic hit, the stationary clinic model they’d started with morphed into a mobile service instead. “We had to pivot to go outside, which was actually working toward our advantage because then we could really just go to folks,” she said.
Care for pets might include emergency vet care, spay and neuter services, vaccinations and wellness exams, pet food assistance, emergency boarding services and help with pet deposits — sometimes a financial barrier that stands in the way of obtaining permanent housing. CAMP volunteers travel around in a cargo van outfitted with the necessary supplies, making regularly scheduled stops in Bend, Redmond, Prineville and other parts of Central Oregon.
CAMP has also recently begun assisting with adoptions. Pets may have a litter of puppies or kittens, for example, requiring the owners to either accommodate many new animals or to find safe homes. Currently, Johnson-Weinberg and other volunteers help to foster pets who need temporary or emergency care or who are eligible for adoption, but as CAMP grows, Johnson-Weinberg hopes to raise adequate funds for CAMP to lease its own facility.
“A facility will help us be able to short-term foster, take in and help rehome animals that owners have decided to surrender to us for myriad different reasons. We can start storing more pet food and supplies.”
This article appears in Source Weekly November 9, 2023.
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