Contrary to popular opinion, it is smart to have your pet altered. When you adopt an animal at WAHS, the spay/neuter fee is included in the adoption fee. But what if you already have an animal and cannot afford the cost? Many people do not realize that we have funds set aside for this purpose, called SNIP, to help cover the spay/neuter costs for community members who need some help with this. The “Spay/Neuter Incentive Program” is one of the most important services our shelter can offer. All you have to do is stop by the shelter and apply for this help.
Lots of people think that the Western Arizona Humane Society can easily take care of all the unwanted litters we have in our city. Since we are an open-admission shelter, we do try to care for any animal entering our shelter, but this year has set a record for litters.
Although the shelter tries very hard, there are more litters showing up every week. Do you know that there are 10,000 puppies & kittens born every hour in the United States! And some of these little ones come to our shelter without their mother.
A couple weeks ago some California visitors were launching their boat at a marina, when they heard a faint meowing sound coming from a storage compartment. Thankfully, they called Animal Control, and were amazed to find that somehow seven tiny kittens, less than one month old were in the boat! They were very thirsty and hungry. Mom was probably somewhere in California! These tiny ones are still taking formula from a bottle, and won’t be available for some time. They are the lucky ones, because a caring volunteer is spending hours nurturing them until they are weaned and old enough for adoption. This caring “foster parent” is in need of more powdered kitten milk-replacement formula---if you are able to donate, she would appreciate some more canisters of “kitten milk”. These seven tiny kittens go through a lot of milk!
Several other volunteers are fostering motherless puppies too young to be on their own. A little over a month ago, a litter of week-old boxer/pit bull mix puppies were brought to the shelter in a cardboard box. Their mother was killed in an accident, and these little ones needed some intensive foster care. All six puppies were placed in foster care, and are now growing and thriving. Without these nurturing volunteers, these litters would not survive.
If all our pet cats and dogs were neutered and spayed, the problem of pet population control would not be an issue. What most people don’t think about is the poor quality of life a stray endures---starvation, poor health, lack of nurturing, and the chance of being hit by a car, shot at, or worse…
The advantages of spay/neuter are multiple:
1. Benefits to you include making the pet a better companion, less aggressive, with less desire to spray (to mark territory), and less desire to escape out of your house or yard.
2. Benefits to your pet include better health (lesser chance of certain cancers) and fewer behavior problems.
3. Benefits to the community are fewer homeless animals and the tax burden that comes from having to deal with this problem. Shelters spend an average of $176 to handle each homeless animal. Nationwide taxpayers spend over $1 billion dealing with the problem of homeless pets.
Each year, WAHS joins with other shelters in celebrating Spay Day USA in February, however, we are concerned with spay/neuter each and every day. We believe that when you take care of your animals, you also take care of your community.
There are lots of ways you can help us in this mission. One is to be sure all of your own pets are altered. Another is to make a donation to the SNIP program to sponsor an animal whose guardian cannot afford the cost. And a third way is to purchase the “pet friendly” license plate, which helps to subsidize the spay/neuter program in Arizona.
Spay or Neuter your pets! As one of our brochures states: “It’s the PETriotic thing to do.”
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