Spay/neuter clinic: cutting for a cause

RONAN — Hundreds of household pets and their owners streamed into the Glacier View Christian School’s gymnasium for a simple surgery that will have profound effects in local towns.

The Spay/Neuter Clinic held last weekend gave locals an opportunity at low-cost surgeries for their pups and kittens in an attempt to lower the number of unwanted animals being born into towns throughout the county. Approximately 225 animals were treated during the two-day event that employed four veterinarians and a gym-full of volunteers, Life Savers Animal Rescue vice president Karen Duty said.

“We had about 30 volunteers and two cat vets and two dog vets,” she said. “We like to have the owners or volunteers stick around to have enough people tend to the animals during recovery.”

The fast-paced effort by a small group of people is one of the most impressive aspects of the whole operation, Life Savers Animal Rescue president Linda Crawford said. The clinic operates on a first-come, first-serve basis. The animals are given a pre-anesthetic that mellows them out before they are shaved and prepped for surgery. They are given gas before they are put under the knife, an operation trained vets skillfully and swiftly perform. The operation takes just minutes and the longest part of the whole process is waiting for the animals to wake up, which can take an hour or two.

“The numbers of animals operated on and amount of volunteers shows the willingness and need of communities to have clinics,” Spay Montana program manager Sandy Newton said. “We are working on grants to help communities that are cash strapped.”

The phone number to sign up for the clinic is released two weeks before the event, and Crawford said this year the list, 225 total, was full within one week. A waiting list is also established, giving those who aren’t served this time around a chance to get their animals fixed during the spring clinic.

Crawford said shelters are overflowing with extra animals, making it harder to place all the orphaned pets in homes.

“It’s tough because we don’t want that window where the animal has a chance to have a litter, but there’s only so many surgeries we can do each time,” Crawford said. “With more money we could do the clinic more often, or hire more vets and vet techs.”

Each clinic costs about $6,800, Crawford said, and when put on twice a year, which has been the case for the last two or three years, the cost nears $14,000.

Donations of time, food and money gets the operation going and the group encourages, but doesn’t require, a $20 co-pay at the door.

“That’s what we aim for, that’s our target market is people who can’t afford to go to the vet,” Crawford said. “We don’t turn anybody down. Someone brought in three cats and a bag of pennies, change and $1 bills and said ‘I only have $17,’ and we saw what it took for her to get that.”

Those three cats were among those fixed and cared for by the volunteers and veterinarians at the clinic. Jaime Cuevas, 11, and Luiz Gonzalez performed some required community service by working in the recovery areas with other volunteers, petting animals and helping them wake up peacefully from the anesthesia.

“I really love animals and would like to be a vet some day,” Sarah Devlin said as she petted a dog named Lucy. “I’ve done it the past three years and really think it helps the community.”

The community benefit is what makes organizations like LSAR and Spay Montana work so hard to put on these clinics throughout the state.

“This is the 50th clinic this year in the state and we still have four to go,” Newton said. “We’ve done close to 7,000 animals this year statewide. If you say there are five animals per litter, we’ve prevented at least 35,000 potential births this year alone. Unwanted animals are causing the state of Montana millions of dollars in animals control and other costs.”

The preventative nature of the clinics make more sense, Newton said, and the amount of people that attend each clinic is indicative of the need for such a low-cost service.

Traci Yocum of Arlee brought her six-month old dog Woody to be neutered on Saturday. She said the convenience and low-cost of the clinic appealed to her. If not for the clinic, “we would, but other people might not neuter their animal because of the cost.”

“I’ve had all my animals neutered so I know how pricey it is,” Yocum said. “We would have had to delay getting it done by a vet because of the cost.”