The moment when our pet family members need a trip to the vet is when people realize how important it is to have a vet they can trust. 

In Sooke, one such vet is Dr. Amanda Booth, who has touched thousands of lives as owner and founder of Saseenos Veterinary Services since 1989. 

Booth will be the first to tell you her full-service clinic has seen plenty of interesting and meaningful cases. 

Years back she treated a boa constrictor with a bacterial infection in a place one would want to avoid on a snake: the mouth. 

"You could tell the owner thought that here's this wimpy little girl, right? And I'm going to be intimidated." It wasn't until the snake started constricting the guy's neck that he let her handle it. 

Another client was Erik the Thespian Pony, a star of Wild West shows for six years and who also raised nearly $30,000 for charities. 

She's also guided clients through heartbreaking situations, or helped their fur babies survive things like lodged bullets, viruses, broken bones and more. 

Throughout it all, Booth cultivated compassion by trying to put herself in the other person's place. 

"I always say all my kids have four legs. So you have to think, how would I feel if I didn't have the knowledge that I do and that was my baby? I've always felt that teaching is a huge part of what I do for clients. Take that extra 15 minutes to help the person to understand the situation." 

When Booth graduated from Western College of Veterinary Medicine in 1983, her class was the first to have 50-50 men and women. The year before, the class had around five women and 65 men and she estimates the majority of clinics were owned by men. 

But that didn鈥檛 stop her from pursuing a lifelong dream. 

"I was fortunate because my mom and dad back in the '70s had purchased this piece of property, thinking that I might want to run a vet clinic one day. Because I knew when I was five years old that this is what I wanted to do." 

Booth's accomplishments since are many. In 2022, Booth expanded her facility by 800 square feet and recently took on a new veterinary partner, Dr Carla Bell. Her clinic has won Sooke Business of the Year. 

She is also proud it used to be the only South Island clinic to take on wildlife cases, sometimes taking midnight RCMP calls. 

"I'm really lucky that it's been such an interesting career," she said. 

This article is a special feature from Sooke Women in Business.