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| Jul 29, 2010 - 06:46 PM |
Queen City News - Helena's FREE Weekly Newspaper |
Helena, Montana |
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The magnitude of the recent Montana Spay/Neuter Task Force’s Helena “pet care event” is its most striking aspect. Held in the 4-H building at the Lewis & Clark fairgrounds, the clinic fills up every foot of space with surgery tables, recovery zones, check-in points and mountains of crates full of waiting animals.
Providing nearly 1,400 free spays and neuters during the five-day event (the October 23 count of 327 broke the previous record of 325 animals in one day) and with nearly 1,000 animals on its waiting list, the Task Force could have doubled its time here and still not gotten to every animal in need.
According to the Humane Society of the United States, a fertile cat can produce three litters of four to six kittens in one year. In seven years, that one female cat and her offspring can potentially produce 420,000 cats. A fertile dog can produce two litters of six to 10 puppies in one year. In six years, that one female dog and her offspring can potentially produce 67,000 dogs.
Three to four million of America’s dogs and cats are euthanized by shelters every year. The Spay/Neuter Task Force motto reads, “Why keep mopping up the flood of unwanted dogs and cats when we can turn off the spigot by spaying and neutering them?”
When Hardin veterinarian Dr. Mark Francis first heard about the Task Force coming into his community, he said he had two concerns, “First, I thought they’d steal business and, second, I thought it would cost us a lot of money.” He was also leery, like many other vets, that the event would be a “hack and slash, with lots of deaths and problems.”
But Francis’s attitude changed after his first participation. Realizing that the event catered to people who wouldn’t have gotten their pets spayed or neutered otherwise, he said that people needed to change their mentality. “We’re not talking about individual animal care,” he said. “We’re talking about herd management.”
Other than a slight lull in spays and neuters directly after a Task Force event has been in town, Francis said that his business hasn’t been affected at all. In fact, the events actually give him exposure to new clients and the ability to counsel them about pet care and post-op checkups.
Francis also emphasized that the events are not “clinic situations.” Though he’s known of no post-op complications other than common incision and suture reactions, the potential for infection is higher due to the large number of animals in the building at one time and their direct exposure to each other. “Most people feel that scheduling in a clinic is worth the money,” he said.
Due to the nature of the event and the animals who come through the doors, the doctors will perform spays and neuters in what some call “less than ideal circumstances.” A litter of seven-day-old wild kittens was brought to the event from a ranch, and one of them, a female, arrested during surgery with Kalispell veterinarian Terry Yunker, a Task Force pillar and cat expert. Yunker was able to resuscitate the animal, and one of the volunteers adopted the kitten.
“Ideally, we wouldn’t be working on this young of kittens,” said Yunker. “But really, this is their only chance to have it done.”
Yunker feels that the Task Force is simply doing what’s right. “These animals give us so much,” he said. “We have to take care of them. It is our responsibility as vets to stop pet overpopulation.”
On the afternoon of Monday, October 25, Pintler Pets, the shelter in Anaconda, brought in a litter of three- to five-week-old kittens that had been found in a dumpster in the parking lot of Butte’s Wal-Mart. The kittens were all spayed and neutered and will return to the shelter for attempted adoption.
But shelters all over Montana are already overrun with cats. The Lewis & Clark Humane Society had 185 cats dropped there in September, and they estimate that October’s total will exceed 200. Those numbers are on top of the felines already housed at the shelter, which is always full, with a residency of about 100 right now.
“Lots of those are feral cats and/or strays,” said Gina Wiest, the society’s executive director. Strays are kept at the shelter for 72 hours in the hope that their owners will reclaim them, but nationally, only 2-5 percent of cats are ever reclaimed, and Helena isn’t an exception. Wiest said that the majority of the cats brought to the shelter are euthanized.
According to her, communities have seen anywhere from a 25-50 percent decrease in the amount of animals brought to shelters and euthanized after a Task Force event has been in town.
“I’m going to reap the benefits of this,” Wiest said. “Honestly, I’d like to be out of a job. I’d like to have to call another community to adopt a dog because we don’t have any here. That would be perfect.”
With such strong statistics to back them up, it would seem that the Task Force garners nothing but support in the communities where it conducts events. Though some volunteers refer to themselves as “Task Force groupies,” religiously assisting with every event, the Task Force often meets with opposition from local veterinarians who echo Francis’s original thoughts.
Not one local veterinarian assisted with the Task Force event held in Butte, and one vet there, according to Francis, actually challenged the county’s support of the event, claiming it was a conflict of interest.
Yunker described this mentality as “very short-sighted.” “The more people take care of their animals, the more care they’ll seek,” said Yunker. “We don’t hurt their income. We help it.”
Task Force President Jean Atthowe said the founding members of the organization “always knew that our goal was to go out of business.”
Atthowe said that the Task Force’s intentions are to see that every animal has a lifetime relationship with a local vet and to see spaying and neutering addressed by local communities.
“Pet overpopulation is a community problem,” said Atthowe. “Humans have an almost biological need for animal companions, and the community needs to help them have them responsibly.”
Of the 11 vets working Helena’s five-day event, three were from Helena (Julie Kappes, Tia Nelson and Lucas Thomi). Other vets hailed from Billings, Polson Libby, Missoula, Hardin and Kalispell.
The Task Force works from a small annual budget that varies between $40,000 and $60,000, collected mostly through grants and donations. According to Atthowe, based on the capacity and experience of the team, the average cost per animal is $15, which includes a free collar and ID tag.
Helena’s was what the Task Force calls a “Phase 1 event” where they run the show with the help of a local agency (in this case, the Lewis & Clark Humane Society). All appointments were scheduled through Capital One Airpage at no charge, Community Home Ox donated all of the oxygen needed, use of the 4-H building was free, and the county commission picked up all of the water and electric bills.
“It’s really great how everyone works for the common good,” said Bonnie Goodman, a diehard volunteer from Livingston who had family fly in from Colorado and Arizona to help with the event. “I’m just not sure everyone realizes the need.”
(To contact the Montana Spay/Neuter Task Force, go to www.mtspayneutertaskforce.org or call 406-777-2644. To view the current residents up for adoption at the Lewis and Clark Humane Society, go to www.mtlchs.org or stop by 2112 E. Custer Ave.)
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The Queen City News is published every Wednesday in Helena, MT, by Mossback Media, LLC.
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