Our care
Four pillars, one purpose.
The sanctuary sits at the centre of everything. The pillars around it exist so the animals never depend on a single source of funding, and so the care we can offer reaches beyond our own gate.
Geriatric and hospice sanctuary
A permanent home for senior, terminally ill and unadoptable companion animals. Residents live in a real home environment with a veterinarian on site around the clock, which means pain is caught early, medication is adjusted the day it needs to be, and nobody spends a night in distress waiting for a clinic to open.
- Acupuncture, herbal medicine, food therapy and manual therapy
- Cold laser therapy for pain and inflammation
- Hydrotherapy using the natural water directly across from the property
- Massage, aromatherapy and physical therapy
- Western medicine integrated whenever an acute condition calls for it
- Whole food diet and targeted supplementation, much of it grown here
Our first residents are already living with us while the barn, fencing and remaining shelters go up around them.
H.E.A.R.T. mobile veterinary clinic
A fully equipped mobile clinic bringing veterinary care to families where they live. The daily work is house calls, covering in-home quality of life assessments, hospice and palliative care, gentle end of life care, preventive medicine, spay and neuter, and urgent triage.
One day each week the van runs a rotating circuit through remote and Indigenous communities on Vancouver Island, where the nearest clinic can be hours away and animals go without care that most of us take for granted. The van is purchased, fully wrapped and conditionally accredited by the CVBC, and we are waiting on final inspection.
H.E.A.R.T. is structured as a benefit company under Bear's Buddies, so it is built to serve the mission rather than to extract from it.
Tranquil Tails Glamping
Eco tourism glamping on twenty two forested acres across from the ocean, dog friendly by design, for people who would rather fall asleep listening to the trees than to a hotel corridor. It exists to fund the animals, so a weekend here pays directly for somebody's medication.
It sits alongside our farm development, since the two depend on each other, and both are in the funding and planning stage right now.
Community hub
A community garden that feeds the residents, education seminars on senior care, animal first aid and the hard decisions that come at the end of a life, and Paws Under the Stars outdoor movie nights on the property. The permit drawings for the stage are complete and we are working toward the engineering sign off.
Most people meet us at the hardest moment of their animal's life. We would much rather meet you first on a warm evening with a blanket and a movie.
If you are facing a decision right now
Call us before the appointment
We would far rather have a conversation with you early than get a phone call from a hospital an hour beforehand. We can talk through quality of life, comfort care, what the next few months might realistically look like, and whether a sanctuary placement is right for your animal or whether keeping them home with support would be better.
There is no judgement in this conversation, ever. People arrive here carrying enormous guilt about money they do not have or capacity they have run out of, and none of that makes you a bad owner.
