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 All in, it costs us about $300 per animal. That's the surgery, anesthesia, core vaccines, microchip, and parasite treatment, plus the share of everything that makes the clinic possible — the rig on the road, thirty volunteers housed and fed, and the small administrative backbone that keeps the organization running. The same care at a private practice runs around $1,000, and our veterinarians and technicians donate their time entirely. The family pays nothing. 

 Every clinic runs on supplies that are used up and gone by the time we pack out. Each animal needs a sterile surgical pack, drapes, gloves, blades, and suture, plus anesthesia — induction drugs, inhalant anesthetic, and endotracheal tubes — with IV catheters, fluids, and reversal agents stocked at every table for the patients who need them. Every animal also gets pain management, core vaccines including rabies, a microchip, and flea and tick treatment. Packs and drapes get sterilized and reused until they wear out, then get replaced. Everything else is gone the moment it's opened. 

 Roughly 30 volunteers turn out for a clinic — surgeons, technicians, and the support crew who handle intake, prep, recovery, and discharge. They donate the weekend and the skills, but they still have to sleep somewhere and eat. We house the whole team at one hotel, which is as much operational as practical: equipment gets staged, the pre-clinic briefing happens there, and the evening debrief is where the next day's surgical schedule gets sorted out. Lunch is sandwiches made and eaten on site so surgery never stops for a break. For a two-day, 100-surgery clinic, lodging and meals run about $11,000 — roughly $110 per animal before a single surgical supply is opened. 

 Everything travels in the rig — surgical tables, anesthesia machines, monitoring equipment, computers, and supplies. It's what makes a reservation clinic possible, and it costs money every day of the year whether we're running a clinic or not. Drivers to move it. Fuel to get it across the state and back. Commercial insurance. Storage between clinics. Annual maintenance to keep it road-legal and reliable. And when something breaks — a transmission, a generator, a compressor — it breaks on our schedule, not on a budget's, and the clinic doesn't happen until it's fixed. 

 Somebody has to keep the organization running between clinics. That means a small salary for our lead veterinarian, who is also our executive director — one person doing both jobs, paid far below what either role would command on its own. It also means business and liability insurance, a bookkeeper, and professional help at tax time. It isn't glamorous and it isn't optional, but it stays deliberately lean: administration accounts for a small fraction of our overall expenses. The overwhelming majority of what we spend goes into the clinic.