Our goal in 2011, thanks to the Compassion Revolution Heigl Foundation grant, is to spay/neuter 1000 dogs living in the Compton Community. We are targeting pit bulls, although we will accept all breeds of dogs. Our belief is that if we continue to focus on this community, offering free spay/neuter through a mobile clinic in the park, we will see less unwanted litters of puppies and less pit bulls being euthanized at the Downey shelter (the shelter that services Compton) Free is often not “free enough”, because the
service is free, dog owners will not just show up! We are dedicated to putting the message out, in a way that speaks to the most difficult to reach dog owner, one who may not even have reliable telephone service, forget gmail, hotmail or any e-mail, most of our people are not online. It’s very common to hear this message on our hotline, “I want my dog spayed and neutered” thinking that spay/neuter is one procedure and most are not sure what the procedure is all about. Our next clinic is scheduled for Saturday January 8th. We had so many people left over from December and November, we did no outreach and we still had over 50 names, translating into over 100 dogs on our waiting list.
Can you imagine if we did not spay/neuter 788 dogs in 2010? Even if each dog would have had only one litter in 2011 and each litter was small, 4-5 puppies, that would have translated into 3940 unwanted new dogs in just a 4 mile radius! Considering all the pit bulls that we spayed/neutered, one can guesstimate that the litters would have been a lot larger, 10-12 is more common for a large breed female to produce.
In the humane community, we can all talk about getting more dog owners to spay/neuter but talk is just that, it’s not a plan until one puts the words and thoughts into action, so let’s do it. Let’s get out into some of the most underserved communities and offer more service like Angel Dogs Foundation, Amanda Foundation, Sam Simon Foundation and Found Animal Foundation, all three have mobile clinics operating somewhere every day of the week.
If you are part of a rescue organization or own a business, please consider raising the money to sponsor a free spay/neuter day in an underserved community like Scratch Lounge, a company that donates 10% of the annual profit to free spay/neuter for cats and dogs, targeting pit bulls and cats.
If you can’t pay for a whole day, why not consider sponsoring just one surgery by donating $100. If you don’t think that just one surgery makes a difference or you can’t really help because you are just one person, think again, this is exactly how I started Downtown Dog Rescue 15 years ago, one dog at a time.
This is all that we can do, together, take on one dog at a time until one day, we are out of business, no more dogs to rescue!
