Thank Your Vet for a Healthy Pet 2007 Finalists

DOG FANCY and CAT FANCY are pleased to announce the Southeast finalist in the 2007 Thank Your Vet for a Healthy Pet contest.

Bob Encinosa, DVM – Southeast finalist
Boyette Animal Hospital
Riverview, Fla.
Nominator: Mary Beth Cammilleri

To Dr. Bob Encinosa, veterinarian at the Boyette Animal Hospital in Riverview, Fla., being selected as the Southeast finalist for Merial’s Thank Your Vet for a Healthy Pet contest came as a surprise and an honor.

Mary Beth Cammilleri, a former client of Encinosa’s, nominated him for the above-and-beyond care he gave her dog Max who suffered from cancer.

“One particularly bad Saturday, Dr. Bob volunteered to meet us at his clinic that night to administer medications to give Max some relief,” she wrote in his nomination. He treated Max again the next day and “enabled Max to enjoy a relatively pain-free weekend instead of one of suffering.”

Max’s condition worsened and he was eventually put to sleep. Encinosa and his staff sent a sympathy card to Cammilleri along with an acknowledgement that he had made a donation in memory of Max to a local nonprofit organization that works to improve the lives of homeless animals.

Encinosa is also spearheading the establishment of a nonprofit organization and facility called the Continuing Pet Care Center, modeled after the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine’s Stevenson Companion Animal Life-Care Center. The Continuing Pet Care Center will take in and care for pets upon their owners’ death.

In addition to leading this facility’s establishment, Encinosa educates children and gives presentations and tours about veterinary medicine and paleontology, “the two coolest things to talk to kids about,” he says.

Encinosa does not consider his level of involvement extraordinary: “Most veterinarians have big hearts and enjoy what they do,” he says. “We learn early on where efforts are best spent because we experience these things on a daily basis.”