VOC Celebration of Life picnic - August 27, 2011

Above my desk I have a plaque of a patient – a beautiful 3-legged white dog called Tasha. She is rolling in the grass, all smiles, eyes closed in enjoyment, not worrying that she only had 3 legs or that she was fighting cancer. Tasha was about living life in the moment and sharing her joy with her owner. The plaque reads: “Some gifts you hold in your hand, some you hold in your heart”. It is the little moments like this that make life big. The roll in the grass, the chase of the squirrel, the lazy stretch on a sunny window sill, the cuddle in the morning. These are the gifts each of us hold in our hearts, forever proof of how our pets enrich our life, make us smile and bring out the best in us.

We decided we should celebrate these gifts and ask our clients to share them in a Celebration of Life picnic on August 27, 2011. This gathering was dedicated to our patients and to our clients, an event to honor living life to the fullest despite of cancer! Each life is worth celebrating! In memory or in presence our pets make our life whole, what better reason should we need to celebrate them all?!

This first VOC Celebration of Life Picnic was a great success! We chose Kelsey Creek Park in Bellevue for our gathering, a small, quiet park that had the perfect picnic area. We were really lucky to have beautiful weather! We had food and drinks for people and pets, treats and toys to take home and everybody had fun. Some of the participants enjoyed a leisurely stroll through the trail around the park.

One of our patients – Tana – volunteered her dad to take pictures of the event. Jeff Betinol from JBPhotto is responsible for most of the beautiful pictures you see. He also put together the Celebration of Life 2011 slide show on our clinic website. It takes a special eye and an open heart to capture the essence of an event like this and we are really grateful for Jeff's fantastic work! Please join us in thanking Jeff by dropping him an email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

We also would like to thank our sponsors for the event - thank you for making this day special to our patients with food, treats and toy!

  • Diamondback Drugs from Arizona - the folks at DBD are always great with our clients and compound anything and everything we/they need. Their customer service is top notch!
  • Phoenix Laboratory (Seattle) - we are so fortunate to have this lab as a partner, we could not run our day without high quality and timely delivery of bloodwork results - our chemotherapy patients get their bloodwork delivered within 2.5 hrs!
  • MWI and Butler have been great in providing our daily supplies and medications. Both companies are a pleasure to work with and go the extra mile to help us find what we are looking for.
  • Merial is the source of the melanoma vaccine - an amazing treatment option for pets with melanoma
  • Pfizer and AB Science are the source for Palladia and Misiver, two new targeted therapies
  • Antech Diagnostics takes care of our late evening samples, especially cytologies
  • KVP provides various veterinary-related items and we got to sample their treats at this event.

Dr. Sarbu