Jennifer Kleinhenz is a licensed veterinary technician who has worked at Animal Health Care Associates in Edgartown for the past seven years. She lives in Oak Bluffs with her husband, who is an arborist.

“He’s the one in the trees with a chainsaw,” she said.

Between them they have five children.

She has been a vet tech for 20 years and also has a well-established pet-sitting business.

This week the petite, energetic technician could be found scuttling in and out of the veterinary center near the airport, fully masked and gloved, delivering prescription medicines and other items to people who had come for emergency visits with their pets.

Under the new pandemic protocol, owners stayed in their cars while their pets were escorted inside by Ms. Kleinhenz.

“We’ve never done anything like this,” she said.

“You feel like your hands are tied, but I feel like I’m there to protect Dr. Ross [the veterinarian] too,” she said.

“It’s been hard to have to turn away some things like a broken tooth or a broken nail, which we never do. But we are in an emergency. I went to the pharmacy today and it was like — through a window.”

Ms. Kleinhenz has no pets of her own at home, but with her business she is always caring for at least one dog.

Now that has changed.

“It’s so weird to have an empty house. I have no one,” she said.

—Julia Wells