Street vet: The people who seek out veterinarian Stan Coe have little, but what they entrust to him means everything

It's 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon, a good half-hour before Dr. Stan Coe and his able volunteers set up their free veterinary clinic in the lime-green basement of the men's shelter at the Union Gospel Mission.

Already the homeless, the infirm, the people trying to live on $100 a week wrap around the corner of Second Avenue Extension and Washington Street, sheltering their lone, true companions in their arms or at their feet.

"Mama's here! Mama's here! Mama's here! He's OK, right? Isn't he?"

From 3 to 5 p.m., as they have twice a month for the past 15 years at the Doney Memorial Pet Clinic, Coe and his coworkers will be reminded of the strong bond between humans and animals. The poorest of these people, castoffs with their castoffs, would rather share a sleeping bag under the freeway with their cat or dog than go to a shelter that doesn't allow pets. They are together 24 hours a day.

"Number 1?"

Yip! Yip! Yip!

Coe, dressed in a doctor's zip-up smock, just the tip of his nose sticking out from under low-slung glasses, at 69 is not the man he used to be. The nametag from his many years at Elliott Bay Animal Hospital has faded. He's had two heart attacks; in the most recent he was a "flatliner."

And he's changed as a person, too, though he's always been compassionate toward animals. He used to avoid the eyes of people who were homeless. Now he sees into their hearts.

The "client" who got in line an hour early to get the No. 1 card to the Doney clinic today is not homeless, which is true of an increasing number of the clinic's users. She's from the low-income Frye Apartments just up the street. She's on disability, living on $400 a month.

As she arrives, young men with pit-bull pups file into the basement behind her, along with a mother and son who bring a limping four-legged friend. There's a young couple back with a cat that has leukemia, and there will be nearly 50 others, including a thin, quiet man who doesn't look up from the aged dachshund that is soon fast asleep on his knees.

"Many of us low-income-homeless couldn't even keep our service dogs if it wasn't for this service," says Donna Patee, as she looks up from her wheelchair to where Topper, her black standard poodle, is pulling away from Coe's ear probe.

"Topper! Manners! Stay!" Patee barks, then softens her orders with "Easy, big dog."

Some of the other dogs here are protectors who don't want to be petted. But Patee's Topper helps with her mobility, alerts her to seizures, even retrieves the phone or television remote control.

'We just don't have the money'

The Doney clinic is named for Dr. Charles "Bud" Doney, who should have been a rival to Coe, since their veterinary hospitals served the same Interbay population in the early 1980s.

But they were friends. Doney died soon after starting the free clinic in 1985, and Coe stepped in to help Nancy Doney keep it going. Other volunteers, including Louise Garbe, Don Rolf and Sandra Glenn, came once and kept coming.

The same can't always be said for monetary donations, which are down. The clinic spends $300 to $500 a month on basic medications. Everything else is donated. Garbe, 79, keeps track of it all by hand, filing 3-by-5 note cards under the pet's name, not the owner's.

One of her least favorite roles is turning people away. People with lesser needs can get free food for their pets here, but not vet services.

"We just don't have the money," says Garbe (pronounced Gar-bee). "There are so many people out of work, I really have to be careful about screening."

Garbe sets up her post at a rickety table and asks for evidence that the pet owner is on food stamps or SSI. She doesn't need proof from people who live on the streets. After 15 years, she can tell.

The clinic pitches in to pay for treatment beyond what can be done in the basement of the mission. But it's harder now. Garbe is worried about the clinic's future. Coe is not. Times have been bad before.

"Oh, I think it will be all right," he says.

On the card for "Lucky" or "Diva" or "White Rhino," Garbe makes note of past ailments treated on Coe's metal table, what the animal needs this day and the vital notation of whether each has been spayed or neutered. Coe is adamant about that. Even purebreds can't come back if they're still out there adding to the population.

"You haven't had her spayed?" Coe asks a young woman, who wants a rabies shot for the cat she picked up at Safeway earlier in the year.

"Easy, kitty," she says in reply, her focus all on the cat. "Whoa, baby."

"Be sure to get her spayed. They're having way too many kittens, and there's no place for them to go."

"Yeah. It's OK, kitty."

Coe clips the cat's toenails. The young woman doesn't want the cat scratching her belly. "I'm pregnant," she confides. Can she get a larger cat carrier? Free food?

Coe reminds her again: Too many kittens are being put down.

But all she sees is the needle as Coe approaches with a vaccine. She whispers:

"Don't look, kitty."

Animals in the pews

Homeless men get temporarily evicted from the day room at the Union Gospel Mission for this twice-a-month event.

In the winter, they complain that society cares more about pets than it does about people. But no one can hear complaints down here. Bark! Bark! Bark! Noises bounce off the concrete walls, including shouts of who's next: "No. 28," "No. 32."

For a while, the clinic was held in the chapel upstairs. The clients sat with their animals in the pews, while Coe held forth in front of a large cross.

"You've heard of Red Cross?" Bill Wippel, spokesman for Union Gospel Mission asks while reminiscing with Coe. "That was Pet Cross."

"It gave the people more faith, though," Coe jokes back.

The clinic may move again this fall from the basement room with temporary steel support posts, part of $800,000 of work done so far to repair damage from last year's earthquake.

If donations are down for the Doney Memorial Pet Clinic, they're really down for the Union Gospel Mission, which faces a $1.2 million general shortfall with another $2.5 million in earthquake repair needed.

But no amount of budget tightening will trim space for the clinic.

"It's a dire need for the homeless," says Wippel. "They are alone and they have no one to care for them, but they do have their pets."

A droll sense of humor

Coe knows he could use some retrofitting himself in the form of a new heart.

Since he won't be around forever, he's pleased that Elliott Bay Animal Hospital still helps out and that there's a committee through the Seattle-King County Veterinary Association to make sure volunteers keep coming.

On this day, veterinarian Melinda Cumming has come up from Renton for the first time, bringing a droll sense of humor.

"She's always been healthy except she once had her ear chewed by a chow," a woman remarks about her collie, to which Cumming quietly replies, "Haven't we all."

She kisses the heads of dogs, pats their owners' arms and then makes do with whatever volunteer Don Rolf can pull from the plastic bins of donated supplies that usually fill the back of his van.

"You do the best you can do and have good thoughts," Cumming says.

Over the years, the clinic, which, for a long time was the only one of its kind in the country, has drawn the attention of People magazine, The New York Times and, appropriately, the "modern dog culture magazine," Bark.

The details that make print include the person who showed up with a tarantula, the woman who pulled eight rabbits out of her backpack, and the homeless man who joked about getting flea spray for his "house."

But the stories that stick with veteran vet assistants and technicians, Paula Shifley, Carol Janssens and Gordon Gravley, tend to be the sadder ones — the times they've had to give bad news, as Cumming must do today.

"I was afraid of that," Richard Bradley, gaunt beyond his years, says at the news that his old dachshund, Henna, has a tumor on a mammary gland.

Bradley's jeans have holes. He's living in temporary housing. Henna used to have her own dog door, plus the best veterinary care.

"Until I ran out of luck and lost my home and everything else," says Bradley, who cradles Henna in his arms. "I did manage to hold on to her. She's with me all the time."

'This is my baby'

There's no doubt in Coe's mind that these animals extend their owners' lives. He came expecting to find animals that were malnourished or mistreated and found just the opposite.

You don't know who is going to walk in, he once said, but you know that what's at the end of their leash or in their crate is likely their best friend.

Meta Woods has been coming for 10 years. She always finds something to give at Christmas to show her appreciation, which helps. Most Saturdays the take is like this one: 51 pets seen, $7.50 pushed into the donation jar.

Woods' "toy poodle with a pit-bull attitude" is 15 and has to be muzzled before he can be treated, but she feels the people here are always kind.

"Mama's here! Mama's here!" she says excitedly as Cumming looks over Tuffy Eugene Woods' skin problems and the little dog objects. "This is my baby, this is my son."

Sometimes there's nothing wrong with Tuffy or with Woods' younger animal, her 13-year-old "daughter," who has only one fang left. But Woods comes anyway, just for the company.

"Do you know how important it is that somebody cares?"

Sherry Stripling: 206-464-2520 or sstripling@seattletimes.com.