Page 30 - BusinessWest February 17, 2025

“What people don’t realize is the cost of medical equipment in veterinary medicine is equal to that in human medicine. It’s very expensive, and it doesn’t last forever. We also want to attract the best vets, the best techs, the best staff. And they need to get paid.”
Sheryl Blancato spends time at each of Second Chance’s four hospitals every week.
Photo by Bob Zemba, Simple Truth Imaging
Paws for Concern
Blancato has often told the story of a puppy named Buster that she — then a single mother of three — adopted during her 20s, following a tough stretch in which her husband left and she battled cancer. Because Buster liked to escape his yard, Blancato got to know East Brookfield’s animal-control officer, and they became friends — and he eventually offered her a job as an animal- control assistant. He retired not long after, and she took over his role.
She’d pick up a lot of strays that were never claimed, and she struggled to get them medical care and into homes, so she decided to start a shelter on a neighbor’s donated plot of land. By that time, she had adopted another dog, Dusty, who had been abused.
So, while raising three children — and, by that time, two stepchildren — she took $400, raised whatever else she could, and built the adoption center that still sits on the property today.
The shelter was offering spay/neuter services and vaccines in the early years, but Blancato realized she could do more to keep pets and families together through expanded veterinary care. The first hospital was built in neighboring North Brookfield in 2010 and expanded to full-service care in 2013, and the other three hospitals followed, giving Second Chance a broad footprint across Central and Western Mass.
In addition to the hospitals and the programs mentioned earlier, Second Chance offers the Helping Hands outreach, which assists dozens of rescue sites, shelters, and municipal facilities by providing low-cost spay/neuter and vet care; Project Good Dog, which matches behaviorally needy dogs with inmates in pre-release programs at local correctional institutions, providing 24/7 care and training for the dogs while teaching handlers patience, compassion, and responsibility; a pet-food pantry; mobile adoption, education,
and vet-care events; and much more.
The low-cost hospital care for families that need it can be the difference
between keeping a pet and losing it. For example, the week before Blancato spoke with BusinessWest, a patient’s dog had swallowed a baby’s pacifier.
“That’s a $6,000 to $8,000 surgery in emergency. They didn’t have it. We were able to do it for $1,000. That’s life-changing for them,” she recalled. “The average family has less than $500 in emergency money. So, if you’re raising kids, $8,000 is a lot of money. I couldn’t have done it when I was a single mom. There’s no way. I would have had to make a really heart-wrenching decision.”
Other area veterinary hospitals have actually sent patients to Second Chance to avoid what Blancato called “economic euthanasia.” And the model of subsidizing care for low-income patients is catching on in other places, she added, though it’s not for the faint of heart.
“When someone says, ‘we want to start a hospital,’ I’m like, ‘OK, here’s the deal. It’s expensive, it’s hard, and you have to have a business mind because we work on a very tight budget.’”
That budget — about $10 million annually — comes in several forms: grants, individual donations, legacy gifts from people who pass away and leave money, as well as hospital co-payments and adoption fees. “We don’t get enough in
the hospitals to sustain it all, so we need those donations.”
And many clients do, indeed, pay full cost, which helps to subsidize those
who need a hand.
Second Chance has gained national attention; it was one of just 12
organizations in the U.S. chosen by PetSmart Charities to be part of its inaugural Accelerator grant program. “The three-year, $1.1 million grant will go toward upgrades in our hospital, as well as helping expand the staff from 12 vets to 26 last year, while increasing total staffing by 20%,” Blancato said.
“That’s huge. What people don’t realize is the cost of medical equipment in veterinary medicine is equal to that in human medicine. It’s very expensive, and it doesn’t last forever. We also want to attract the best vets, the best techs, the best staff. And they need to get paid. They have bills to pay, too. So it’s staff, it’s equipment, it’s overhead. We have to raise all that money.”
Team Effort
Blancato, like several other Difference Makers this year, was quick to deflect the idea of this award as an individual one.
“This is not about me. We have over 100 staff, we have hundreds of volunteers ... it’s a massive thing now. And what I tell staff when they come on is, ‘this is not just a job. This is the one job that, at the end of every day, you can get in your car, take 30 seconds, and think about at least one impact you had that day. It could be on a person. Maybe you were able to save that pet.’”
Like the family who brought in an ailing, 17-year-old cat, ready to say goodbye to an animal they adored. But Second Chance ran a quality-of-life exam and found the cat had thyroid disease, which was very treatable with medication.
“To be prepared to say goodbye and then take the cat home, that’s life- changing for those people. We gave them another two, maybe three years,” she went on. “We have hundreds of those stories. I always tell the staff when they come on, ‘yes, you’re getting a paycheck’ — we take good care of our staff. But they also get to have that rewarding experience — every day, something is going to be life-changing.”
Meanwhile, Second Chance’s adoption center has a 99.9% live release rate, an incredibly high number for a no-kill shelter.
“It’s amazing. As animal control, I used to pick up litters of puppies running down the street, and I just wanted to keep puppies off the street,” Blancato recalled. “To watch it evolve, with all the innovation and the programs and how many people are impacted, you sit back and go, ‘wow.’
“I always tell people, you can’t say, ‘I’m just one person. I can’t make a difference,’ because that’s not true. Yes, you’re one person, and yes, you have your limitations, but if you have a vision that people can see, then others will join in. That’s how this has become what it is. It’s your vision, then it’s other people coming out of nowhere, and the next thing you know, you have a whole army behind you. And that’s really exciting.” BW
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