Vet’s dedication to her patients, city boundless

Jane G. Linden, a veterinarian who owns the Providence River Animal Hospital, loves the city where she lives and works.
She’s proven her dedication by renovating a dilapidated shop in Providence’s former Jewelry District into a modern animal hospital and by the number of charitable events she regularly sponsors to help the indigent and their pets. She lives in the city, too.
And although the New Jersey native and Brown University graduate says she “can’t imagine” leaving the state capital, at the same time she cannot help but toy with the idea. “Providence is a great city,” she said, “except for taxes.”
Her property tax bill for the animal hospital on Point Street increased by $5,000 last year. Due to a tax hike that has since taken effect, she expects her bill will climb higher this year, although she does not know by how much yet. This is only for her business; she also pays taxes on her residence as well.
“It is a terrible situation for property owners and businesses. It makes me think about leaving the city,” she said of the tax situation. “I don’t understand how the state thinks it can foster business by having the small businesses – the little, puny businesses – bear the entire burden” while larger corporations take advantage of tax credits and loopholes not available to smaller enterprises.
This is a common complaint among small-business owners, but what makes it almost poignant in Linden’s case is the commitment she demonstrates to Providence, such as her investment in a first-class animal care center, with an expansive waiting room, a surgery suite, a recovery room and a brand-new, digital X-ray machine.
In the last two years, her business has sponsored two open houses to raise money for charitable animal causes, including the Companion Animal Foundation. The latter is a Rhode Island Veterinary Medical Association program that provides funds for animal care to people who cannot afford it otherwise. Linden will take over the presidency of the 200-member association in January, when the organization will mark its 50th year, and she said she has a “strong interest” in continuing to help the indigent. Twice a year she visits schools in the city, usually in South Providence, with her two dogs, Raisin and Lily (who at more than 15 years old is deaf), to help educate children about the joys and responsibilities of having pets. “Some of these kids have never touched a dog before,” she said.
Linden and her staff regularly help out at McAuley House, a charitable organization operated by the Religious Sisters of Mercy. “It’s a great cause. They do so many wonderful things in this city, very quietly, under the radar,” she said. Linden and an associate treated about 25 cats and dogs at a clinic for McAuley clients that she sponsored in a tent in the agency’s Elmwood Avenue parking lot last year.
Working with Rev. Mary Margaret Earl, administrator of McAuley House, she held a fundraiser in December for establishment of a permanent fund to provide veterinary care to McAuley House clients, raising $2,500 to set it up.
With all the ills in the world, she makes no apologies for her commitment to animal care. When it is suggested that those of the baby boomer generation in particular lavish an extraordinary amount of care on pets, Linden indicated she believes it is fully justified.
Many indigent clients she sees found their pets abandoned in the street. They adopted them, take care of them and now, “the pets have become their companions and they love them,” she said.
Linden said she always wanted to be a veterinarian, but got “derailed” at Brown by social causes and, after earning a master’s degree in social work from Boston University, worked with the severely mentally ill. Frustrated by the system and the slow pace of progress in her clients, she went back to school. She earned her veterinary degree in a four-year program at Tufts University in Boston and served a one-year internship at an animal hospital in Springfield, Mass., before returning to Providence and opening the Providence River Animal Hospital in 2004. She has been a veterinarian for 12 years and her approximately 3,000 clients are mostly from the Providence area. Animals she and her staff treat number roughly 70 percent dogs, she said, and 30 percent cats.
Although she devotes a lot of time to helping the indigent, Linden makes a point of noting that she does not give free pet care because her business cannot afford to. “I wish we could,” she said. “We will help people finds ways to fund the care and we work with clients to figure out what kind of care they can afford.”
She employs five people and pointedly noted that she would hire more “if our taxes weren’t so high.” The state should be run like a business, she said, though she could offer no recommendations for improvements because she noted she lacks government expertise.
“But I’d love to be on a committee,” Linden quickly added. “I like the mayor and I’d love to talk to him about how he can help us stay in the city. I need to have a good incentive to stay.”
As a female veterinarian, Linden is in the majority. In the United States and in Rhode Island, more veterinarians are women than men. The American Veterinary Medical Association in March 2010 reported 79,432 members, including 44,802 women and 43,196 men.
In Rhode Island the health department reported in May 2010 that there are 413 licensed veterinarians in the state, 259 or 63 percent of whom are female. &#8226