By: Brandy Oxford
Assistance programs are available. Veterinarians are sympathetic. Bob Barker reminded every Price is Right viewer to do it.
Still, every year sees me giving flea baths to an abandoned, pregnant dog or bottle-feeding a stray kitten on my bathroom floor. I find them abandoned on the road or in the woods, helpless.
Sometimes their negligent owners care just enough to call.
“I couldn’t afford to get her fixed,” they tell me.
As I jump in a car I haven’t paid off to pick up these cast off pets and look at the red light on my gas gauge, I think, “I can’t afford this either.”
Thursday, as I listened to Karen Mullins, manager of the Humane Society of Southern Illinois, talk about how hard it is for her and her co-workers to euthanize animals day after day, I once again found myself cursing those inconsiderate pet owners who don’t bother to spay or neuter their pets.
The Murphysboro facility receives an average of 250 animals a month, but those numbers often top 400, Mullins said. Currently, their euthanasia rate is 90 percent, she said.
Mullins said there simply aren’t enough no-kill animal shelters to handle the constant influx of unwanted animals.
“Spaying and neutering is so important and a lot of people just don’t get it,” Mullins said. “I’m always about the spaying and neutering. You just never get used to euthanizing.”
The society’s Pennies for Pets program offers $35 spay and neuter vouchers on the first business day of each month.
“We open at noon, but people start lining up a few hours before because they are a hot commodity,” Mullins said. “Once we’re out of that 30 vouchers, we’re out for the month.”
Through the program, which is funded entirely by donations, the society matches the price of each voucher turned in to participating veterinarians.
“When we reimburse the vet, we’re actually paying $70,” she said. “We don’t make a penny off of that. There may be months that we don’t have it because we don’t have the funds.”
This program is one of many meant to assist in reducing the animal population through ways other than euthanasia.
If you can’t afford to spay or neuter a pet, don’t get one. If you already have one, call your vet, call shelters, find a way to stop perpetuating this cycle because you can’t afford a litter of puppies or kittens either. Save rescue workers like Mullins the heartache of watching another good pet die
