ANNANDALE, Va. (WWBT) – A Virginia veterinarian is taking her expertise across the world to Ukraine where she plans on helping the animals stuck in the war-torn country.
NBC4 says Dr. Courtney Katsur, with the Columbia Pike Animal Hospital in Annandale, has packed her bags full of medical supplies to help sick, wounded and malnourished animals that were separated from their owners or forced to be left behind since the beginning of the war.
According to NBC4, when Katsur saw images of what animals across the country were going through she had an urge to help.
“The whole atrocity of the war has been difficult to watch. It’s difficult to watch knowing I can’t do anything,” she said to NBC4 reporter Solangi Sosa.
Then Katsur realized that she as a veterinarian could do something to help.
“Watching all of these people flee with their pets, how important their pets were to them, and then those people that left and felt so awful that they left their pets,” she told NBC4. “And I realized that I do have a place to help.”
She plans on traveling to the Ukraine and Romania border for two weeks where she will lend her skills to Breaking the Chains and Warpaws. The joinr organizations have been volunteering since the start of the conflict and have gone right into areas destroyed by the war to rescue animals.
Katsur’s biggest worry for now is that she may not be able to save as many as she would like once she gets there.
The veterinarian is collecting donations to go towards needed supplies, travel costs and medications that she will bring with her according to NBC4. She also wants to help coordinate adoptions and reunite pets with their owners.
Copyright 2022 WWBT. All rights reserved.
Send it to 12 here.
Want NBC12’s top stories in your inbox each morning? Subscribe here.
