‘Healing together’: Veterinary clinic, pet rescue reuniting animals lost during Greenfield tornado

By Pepper Purpura

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    GREENFIELD, Iowa (KCCI) — A central Iowa pet rescue and an Adair County veterinary office are healing and reuniting animals lost during an EF-4 tornado that devastated the city on May 21.

Every day since the storm, Amy Heinz and her team from AHeinz57 Pet Rescue has been digging through rubble, searching for lost animals. Each evening, she baits traps, hoping to lure someone’s missing pet inside.

When the tornado came through, Heinz says dozens of animals were lost or injured; some were hurt from wandering through the wreckage. Adair County veterinary clinic doctor Melissa Gracia Rodriguez is working with Heinz to treat pets in need. She says many of the injured animals are coming to her office with glass and smaller debris in their eyes and embedded in their skin. Some have broken bones; others died from their injuries.

Gracia Rodriguez says seeing her clients come in with injuries or the devastating news of a pet’s death is heavy for her. She’s in her first year in the veterinary field.

“I love every one of my patients like I do my own,” Gracia Rodriguez says. “So, it really hit hard, especially the ones where their pet was killed through the tornado. It’s hurting, and I feel really bad for my clients who are experiencing that.”

However, she’s pushing through the heartache for the pets she can help, saying she feels a duty to heal the animals of Greenfield.

Gracia Rodriguez is also treating animals without physical injuries. She and Heinz say most of the pets they’ve seen are traumatized from what they experienced during the storm, including Gracia Rodriguez’s own dogs.

“(While sheltering during the storm) the wall was trying to fall on top of us,” Garcia Rodriguez says. “I had both my dogs by the collar, and now whenever I grab one of my dogs by the collar, she just gets really scared and frightened, like she’s expecting the same thing to happen again.”

That fear is something many people who survived the tornado have also said they experience after the storm during previous reports.

By reuniting and healing pets, Heinz and Gracia Rodriguez say they hope being together can help ease both the owner and animal’s anxieties when future storms inevitably roll through Greenfield.

“We want to get these animals back to their owners so they can heal together,” Heinz says.

AHeinz57 is covering all veterinary costs for pets injured during the tornado at Adair County Veterinary Clinic.

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