🐶 Dog blood donors wanted | Morning Newsletter

This is Sunday. Expect raw and rainy conditions throughout the day, with a high near 43.

January is National Blood Donor Month for humans — and for pets. And just as for people, there is a shortage of available animal blood for medical procedures.

Our main story checks in with Philly-area animal hospitals and blood banks that play an important, sometimes lifesaving, role in the world of animal medical care.

— Paola Pérez (@pdesiperez, morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)

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In the Philadelphia region, only a handful of places operate animal blood banks, including:

🏥 Penn Vet (The Ryan Veterinary Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania), which has one of the oldest animal blood banks in the nation, founded in 1987

🏥 Philadelphia Animal Specialty and Emergency, a privately owned animal hospital in Point Breeze, which has a blood bank that also serves ACCT Philly

🏥 The Mount Laurel Animal Hospital maintains a canine blood bank in South Jersey

These banks — mainly for dogs and cats — are a tiny, and still largely unregulated, part of the veterinary health-care industry, but they play a crucial role in saving animals’ lives.

Notable quote: “The last thing someone should worry about when their pet is having an emergency is if the hospital they’re at has the lifesaving blood they need,” said Amanda Parylak, a certified veterinary technician.

Keep reading to learn how your pet can help Philly-area vet hospitals build their blood supplies.

Hundreds of volunteers spread out over the city on Wednesday night to catalog the extent of homelessness in Philadelphia.

They did this by conducting a count of everyone sleeping on the street within city borders, as required by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Why it’s required: The annual count helps set federal policy on combating homelessness — allowing officials to understand the demographics of a national crisis and allocate funding accordingly.

The count is also a way for local officials to take stock of the situation on their own streets. The city will not release the total count from this year for another few months, but for the last five years, the number of unsheltered people has decreased citywide.

Past counts: Beth Gonzales, the deputy director of the city’s Office of Homeless Services, said that volunteers count 700 to 900 people sleeping on the streets each year. More than 1,000 unsheltered people were counted in 2018, compared to 800 last year.

Volunteers last week came across people sheltering under overpasses, in church doorways, and over grates where steam hung in the night air. Each person was offered clean socks and gloves and contact information for shelter, plus a $5 gift card to Dunkin’ in return for answering survey questions.

Keep reading to hear from some of the volunteers and the people they encountered, plus learn how the count affects housing policy in Philadelphia.

An Allentown-born actor rode along with the Philadelphia Police Department in Kensington last week to prepare for a miniseries role.

Who was it?

A) Michaela Conlin

B) Amanda Seyfried

C) Tim Heidecker

D) Tina Fey

Think you know? Check your answer.

Hint: This Eagle is a finalist for AP’s defensive rookie of the year award

AJAR LECTERN

Email us if you know the answer We’ll select a reader at random to shout out here. Cheers to Mary Beth Pratt who correctly guessed Friday’s answer: Brandywine Creek. The hint was: “One of the region’s most flood-prone waterways.”

🎶 Today’s Sunday track goes like this: “Every time I wish / That you would be mine.”

Did the song sound familiar? Tomoko Aran’s “Midnight Pretenders” was (beautifully) sampled by The Weeknd on his 2022 track “Out Of Time.”

👋🏽 Thanks for starting your morning with The Inquirer.