Volunteer Spotlight - Brandy Ford

Brandy at a Shot Clinic

Brandy & Holly at Christmas

Brandy Ford 

Brandy is a pleasure to work with and she brings a helpful skill set to her volunteer role. She's an RN and she gently and diligently assists vets as they vaccinate pets at Shot Clinics.  She does so with a bright smile on her face. Of course it helps that Brandy absolutely loves animals! We are so glad to have her on the team!  

Thank you for your time, Brandy

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MHC Volunteer since: Over a year 

Volunteer position/s?   
Shot & Chip Clinics.  I prepare the vaccines for the animals and frequently get to assist the Vets with giving the immunizations or placing the microchips each month. We typically see well over 125-140 animals each month and has been over 200 a couple of times in the summer months. I did do visits with the animals that are in the adoption center, but quickly found it was so difficult to leave them, so I had to back off from doing that. 

Fun Facts:
I have reached a personal professional goal of working as a RN for 50 years this year and this is huge for me. I have wanted to be a nurse since I was 12. I'm from Dallas and went to TWU and A& M later in life when women could go.

I enjoy my job so much, I can't bring myself to retire yet. I am a Certified School Nurse for MISD at Carver Center, which is the elementary Gifted & Talented program for MISD. I get the pleasure of taking 40 students with a few parents to hear all of the Midland Odessa Symphony MasterWorks performances each year and that is such a special treat.

​Got pets?
I have a Asian Leopard and domestically bred Bobcat and my Service Dog Holly. She is a very large white Lab that I adopted from the Adoption Center inside PetSmart and that is how I got involved with being a volunteer for MHC. She was a 2y/o surrender and when I saw her I fell in love with her and soon found out how smart she is and began our year of training to be a service dog. She goes on SouthWest with me and everywhere.

Why do you volunteer with MHC? What motivates you to stay involved?
Being an adoptive guardian is so special and getting to help our community meet the need of getting their pets protected from disease and the spread of disease and keeping the animals in our community from a completely preventable death is very important. Not only does MHC provide the service for our area, but the cost to vaccinate your animal is kept to a bottom line cost that most anyone can afford.

Education of pet guardians is very important and getting this information out to the people of Midland is the only way our community can protects its inhabitants, animal and human alike. These are children with fur and providing them with good sensible protection is no different than immunizations for our human children too.
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In your opinion, what is the most important work that this organization does? 
Of course one of the top priorities is to stop killing animals in the shelters and having a wonderful environment like the Adoption Center is terrific for perspective guardians to meet and see if their current family members will be able to meld with a new pet. 
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Has volunteering with MHC had a positive impact on your life?  Tell us about a time/incident  that was especially meaningful for you while volunteering with MHC.  
I believe it was in December at our monthly clinic, a couple found a brother & sister mixed breed puppies and rescued them and wanted to get them their first set of immunizations and brought them in to us and when we were informed they were available to be adopted, their pictures were put on the MHC website right then and before we were done with our two hour clinic that morning, one of the puppies was adopted!!! What a terrific win all the way around. Just this simple act of kindness by these 2 people prevented the death of these 2 puppies and that would have been such a shame as they were so very sweet and cute. 

If you could encourage someone else to volunteer with MHC, what would you tell them?
Whether you have 30 minutes or 3 hours of time to volunteer, there is an animal that will benefit from that time. I know there is one lady that takes her book to read and gets in the habitat with one of the animals and just loves on them while reading her book!!! Who is the winner here I ask you???

What is your favorite thing about volunteering with MHC? 
Getting to meet the people in our community that share the common love of animals is so much fun and getting to see all the different kinds of dogs and cats is all an animal over like me can ask for!! What a gift to be a part of MHC!!