Jeff Young (Facebook photo)
by Jeff Young, DVM
My name is Jeff Young. I have been a veterinarian for more than 25 years.
I have been on numerous humane society boards, was an animal control officer before I became a veterinarian, and I speak and consult on companion animal overpopulation issues all over the world.
I have done more than 180,000 spay/neuter surgeries in the last twenty years, and have established full service training hospitals in Bratislava, Slovakia and Merida, Mexico.
I have trained more than 350 veterinarians in efficient and safe surgical techniques.
Jeff Young at work with two vet techs.
(Facebook photo)
One simple goal
From the moment I graduated from vet school, I have had one simple goal: to reduce the population of unwanted dogs and cats around the world. As a veterinarian, I found that I could do so simply by providing and promoting low-cost spay/neuter.
Over the last several decades, there has been a considerable reduction in dog and cat overpopulation, driven by the rise of educational groups like the Spay USA subsidiary of the North Shore Animal League, mobile spay/neuter clinics like those operated by the Montana Spay Neuter Task Force, and the construction of mega-sterilization clinics like the one built by the Animal Foundation of Nevada in Las Vegas, opened in 1989 and now emulated worldwide.
(See also “Spay-It-Forward” says Dr. Jeff, Rocky Mountain Vet.)
Marian’s Dream booth at 2014 AVMA conference. Spay/USA founder Esther Mechler, who now heads Marian’s Dream, is at right.
“Surplus waste”
But each year, worldwide, as many as 300 million dogs and perhaps nearly as many cats are killed, sometimes captured and sold for meat, fur, or laboratory use, sometimes poisoned in the streets, sometimes drowned as puppies or kittens, and sometimes just quietly, efficiently, and invisibly killed in animal shelters, simply because they represent “surplus waste.”
The number one cause of death for dogs and cats in the developed world is still euthanasia. Large humane societies waste far too much money on housing animals, building expensive facilities, and paying elaborate salaries. They tend to be run like for-profit businesses.
Smaller rescue groups often lean toward the “animal collecting business,” and are often poorly run and set up by self-gratifying little chieftains.
(See Casualties of the “save rate”: 40,000 animals at failed no-kill shelters & rescues.)
(Beth Clifton photo)
More expensive care for ever-fewer pets
Veterinarians don’t tend to view dog and cat overpopulation as something our profession needs to address. Mainstream private practice veterinarians treat a smaller percentage of the companion animals in our society each year, while providing more complex, advanced, and expensive medicine to a shrinking percentage of financially affluent owners.
Reality is that as our level of technology and medical knowledge increases, the number of animals who benefit from these advances decreases.
There is little debate that animal laws and public awareness, especially with regard to companion animals, are changing. Circa 1970, a range of estimates report, U.S. animal shelters were killing from 13 to 23 million dogs and cats per year. The current shelter toll, estimated with increasing precision because more states now have mandatory data tracking is between 2.5 and 2.7 million.
(See Record low shelter killing raises both hopes & questions.)
“Brought to Calaveras County Animal Services by a good samaritan,” according to text accompanying this Facebook photo, this pit bull was clearly in a fight, but there is no verification offered that it was as an alleged bait dog.
Exaggerated claims
But euthanasia numbers only account for what becomes of animals who are admitted to shelters in the first place, at a time when shelters desperate to lower their euthanasia totals and increase their “live release” rates are making themselves increasingly inaccessible to people who for whatever reason want or need to surrender animals who may not be easily adopted out.
Humane organizations play with words and statistics to make us feel better about overpopulation, euthanasia and shelters, many of which are still little more animal warehouses, albeit fancier warehouses than a few decades ago.
Humane organizations make it appear they have done or are doing so much more than they really are. They boast that only 2.5 to 2.7 million animals are killed because of all their hard work. Many boast that they only euthanize unadoptable animals, and even claim to be “no-kill,” while using definitions of “unadoptable” that include animals with broken legs, ringworm, bad upper-respiratory disease, urinary issues due to diet, and other conditions that are easily treatable––and meanwhile striving to avoid receiving those animals, who are the animals most in need of humane care.
PetSmart Charities’ Rescue Waggin’ van. Moving adoptable animals from grim animal control shelters to adoption boutiques saves lives, but adoption transport too often just moves dangerous dogs from one jurisdiction to another.
Great marketing
Humane organizations have done a lot of great marketing to make so much out of so little. Many get rich while pretending they generally care about the plight of companion animals, while demonstrating genuine care of fewer and fewer.
I am here to ask you, the public, to demand that humane organizations start making a real difference.
First, you must understand that you cannot, and I repeat, cannot adopt, warehouse or rescue your way out of overpopulation!
Maddie’s Adoption Center in San Francisco, opened in 1996, introduced an overdue revolution in animal shelter design, but also inspired many organizations to build “adoption palaces” instead of better s/n outreach programs.
(See Why we cannot adopt our way out of shelter killing.)
“Large shelters are a waste of money”
People think they can help by donating to tangible things like brick-and-mortar projects to give animal shelters “nice new buildings.”
The truth is that large shelters are simply a waste of money. I cannot argue they don’t do some good, but large shelters, whether they are “kill” or “no-kill,” are not cost-effective for what society gets in return.
I argue that euthanasia should never be accepted as a form of population control. It is simply not the solution.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Warehousing
But do not get me wrong: there are things far worse than death for many animals. For example, being warehoused in a poorly managed “no-kill” shelter can be far worse than death!
I have heard some good no-kill shelters exist––the editors of ANIMALS 24-7, who have made a point of inspecting the best, attest to the quality of many––but I personally have never seen a no-kill shelter that wasn’t overtly practicing cruelty to animals or was at best neglectful in their care. And yes, this includes some of the large no-kill shelters worth millions of dollars.
It is humane organizations, I find, that are the most hypocritical of all.
Jeff Young, DVM.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Primary focus must be on s/n”
To get totally radical, humane groups could literally take all their animals to animal control/government agencies or refuse to accept any new animals.
This might force local officials and society to truly deal with the overpopulation problem. If humane groups are truly interested in solving overpopulation, then their primary focus must be on spay/neuter. Even if that means doing it for free, and even if that means offending veterinarians.
The secondary focus has to be education. Education means not only reaching out to schools, but also providing behavioral counseling and training classes to the public.
700 cats were impounded in 2012 due to alleged neglect from Caboodle Ranch, a no-kill cat shelter in Florida, which reportedly had $80,000 in the bank at the time. (Facebook photo)
“No-kill shelters are the most inhumane trend”
Once again warehousing and adopting will never solve the overpopulation problem. I believe “no-kill” shelters are the most inhumane trend in animal welfare. The trend toward every shelter trying to become a “no-kill” shelter has allowed for hoarding, collecting, and warehousing sick and dying animals to become widespread norms, while euthanizing even the animals most in need of euthanasia to end their suffering is abhorred.
Practicing “no-kill” sheltering while either neglecting animals or turning away animals in need does not mean you love animals. It means you love the idea of animals, you love the money that being “no-kill” guarantees, and/or you love the idea of your great sacrifice for the animals.
What a joke! The only sacrifice involved, too often, is the physical, psychological and general well-being of the animals who are either brought into “care” or denied care.
The American Veterinary Medical Association recently criticized Jeff Young, DVM for doing this surgery bare-armed, instead of in surgical scrubs. Responded Young, “Let’s take a look at outcomes. I challenge any vet at any time to do 100 surgeries at the same time I do and compare outcomes. Look people, our patients lick their own asses. We are working on animals with great immune systems. The biggest threat we should be concerned about is all the antibiotic use. Where do you get bad life-threatening infections? At human hospitals with very strict sterility. By the way, I get to cut off the legs of many pets coming from fancy hospitals all the time due to horrible resistant infections. The challenge is out there; let’s compare.”
“Less & less emphasis on facts & results”
The saddest part is that we Americans live in the richest country on earth, yet I see a lot of countries that have already figured these things out.
America is all about marketing and perception with less and less emphasis on facts and results.
Once again, there are many things far worse than death. So, as you give your money, be sure you know what you are getting in return. Far more people are contributing to the problem than contributing to the solution.
I don’t blame society in general, but I most certainly blame the so-called animal welfare movement and the veterinary profession, as they should be the true sentinels of animal welfare in America.
Money donated to help animals after the 2011 Fukushima disaster remains unspent, yet dogs like Taiyo still need help.
“Stop giving blindly”
They, we, and I have failed miserably with this task. However, it is never too late to correct the course we have chosen. It does take work, energy, and desire to make the right decisions and be willing to stand our ground.
I implore anyone reading this to make a change and stop giving blindly. Give with conditions and give with true compassion. Give to make a real difference and stop buying into all the marketing in the animal community.
Remember that while brick-and-mortar looks great, it does nothing in the long run to truly solve the problems we have. Also remember that simply being alive does not imply quality of existence.
(Faye McBride photo)
“Vets contribute to suffering”
Veterinarians contribute to companion animal suffering with their hypercritical opinions regarding the value of companion animals, and their ability to routinely rationalize charging $3,000 – $5,000 for procedures that can easily be done for far less.
Okay, so it’s the American way. We’re all about market forces. Veterinarians can’t be “forced” to change what they do! Or better yet, veterinarians do not want to lower the “standard of care” to their beloved clients. Now that’s a good one! Let’s see, if you can’t afford a $3,000 surgery (say an exploratory for a foreign body), then you have to put your pet to sleep?
Where did the value or compassion go? They’re not going to tell you about low-cost alternatives; they’re not going to lower the price for the single mom with two kids and a minimum wage job.
“It’s better just to kill your pet and get a new one?”
Your animal is so valuable to veterinarians, and their level of medicine is so high, that it’s better just to kill your pet and get a new one?
After all, new animals are a dime a dozen.
You can argue that some people should not have animals, but they do. They probably should not have the children that they have either.
(Merritt Clifton collage)
“People and dogs/cats have evolved together”
Reality is people and dogs/cats have evolved together for thousands of years. There is great benefit, both physically and mentally, to having companion animals. Having raised three kids with a yellow lab, I’m here to say that dog was very much a part of my family.
I have always been able to make the distinction between humans and animals. But, I can’t say that all humans are better than that dog of mine. My dog had more to offer me and my little part of the world than a lot of humans in this world.
We have come to identify “our pets” as part of the family and yes they are very important to our little worlds. So telling a poor person, an over extended person, a person of unfortunate circumstances, that it’s $3,000 or death to their family member, just isn’t an ethical, moral, or compassionate option.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Old, fat white guys”
The only light I see in the veterinary industry is that we graduate more women than men these days, of course much to the dismay of all the old, fat white guys in the three piece suits. These women are actually forcing compassionate changes in the industry.
A lot of veterinarians want it both ways. They want to believe their time and skills are highly valuable, and that your companion animal is worthy of thousands of dollars of investment, but––and a very big but––if you don’t have enough money, then the value of the animal changes to virtually nothing.
Clearly, from this perspective, value is not intrinsic to any given animal, but rather is solely based on the owner’s perception and financial abilities.
(Beth Clifton photo)
“All companion animals have true intrinsic value”
There has never been a clear line in my mind as to when too much is in truth too much. There has always been a clear line in my mind that all companion animals have a true intrinsic value.
If anyone believes that most veterinarians became veterinarians because they love animals, or generally think about animal welfare on a level other than financial, then I am here to tell you that you are sadly mistaken. Having said all that, as a veterinarian, I can tell you that in order to help others, you have to own a successful business.
Of course money is a factor in life, as are medical costs, educational costs, and the costs of running a business.
Vet tech Kenny Robbins with newly sterilized cats. (Beth Clifton photo)
“If animals were dying at the rate we euthanize them”
Unfortunately, very few veterinarians are as well trained in business as they are in medicine.
If animals were dying at the rate we euthanize them, the veterinary profession would be pouring tons of money and energy into research to solve the problem. But because veterinarians feel companion animal overpopulation is a societal issue, they can turn a blind eye.
I submit that we as veterinarians are uniquely qualified to deal with this societal issue. I further submit that if we as a profession deal with companion animal overpopulation, we will elevate our status as professionals in our society.
(Beth Clifton photo)
“Spend more on s/n & education than on sheltering”
Being recognized both nationally and internationally for my work in the overpopulation debate, I promise never to waiver in my commitment to reduce the number of unwanted companion animals worldwide. I will never accept euthanasia as a form of population control. I will never support “no-kill” shelters in any way. I will never support “kill” shelters either, unless they spend more money on spay/neuter and education than they do on sheltering.
We cannot adopt, shelter, warehouse or kill our way out of dog and cat overpopulation. We can demand and change what we do, whom we support and how we support them.
If veterinarians really want animals to be more valuable in our society then, I submit, reducing the surplus of bodies will help accomplish this.
(Dawn James image)
Basic economics
If the supply goes down and demand is the same, then value increases. This is basic economics. Thus, if you don’t do spay/neuter for humane or ethical reasons, then you can obviously do it for longterm monetary benefit.
Merritt & Beth Clifton
I will continue to train vets from all over the world in safe, fast, efficient spay/neuter techniques. I will continue to build clinics in other countries to use as training centers. I will continue to spay or neuter every companion animal that passes through my doors. We have a moral and ethical contract with our companion animal friends and we must honor this contract!
If a tree falls at ANIMALS 24-7…
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Watching this veterinarian’s series on Animal Planet, I could tell from the start that he was very different from most of the veterinarians I have met, who seem to prioritize business over life and love. I know everyone has to eat, and pay the bills, but when you are dealing with MY LOVED ONES, you had BETTER care about them. I knew immediately that this man does. And he’s absolutely correct.
Great article! Thanks for your work doing s/n. Is the number at the beginning of the article correct, or is there an extra zero? With the 18,000 number, that works out to one spay or neuter every 15 minutes of every workday for 20 years. It’s even impressive taking out a zero!
I used to take Turkish street cats to the municipal s/n clinic when I lived in Istanbul. I was always amazed that they would do the surgery in under 30 minutes and literally hand the soaking wet, still sleeping, freshly stitched cat back to me to take home to recuperate. Every one of these cats was up and active and showing no signs of pain within hours, healed perfectly, and in fact did better than most pets I’ve seen in the U.S. getting spayed by expensive private vets.
I’ve lived around the world, and know that people in Europe and the U.K. almost never do routine spay/neuter. Yet (with exceptions like Spain and Portugal), they have far less dog overpopulation than we do.
Keep up the good work! P.S. I have no problem with doing bare-armed surgery if arms are clean. Scrubs aren’t any cleaner than arms–they are not boiled, after all. And humans handle them to put them on, so they get just as germy as arms.
The relatively low s/n rates in the U.K. and Europe reflect the widespread use there of two categories of animal contraceptive which have never caught on in the U.S.: hormone treatments, available in the U.S. but expensive and considered inconvenient by most pet-keepers, and treatments which could be used by humans to induce abortion. Details about these treatments are included in “600 Million” reasons to toss Alex Pacheco’s alleged spay/neuter cookies.
BARE arms are MUCH cleaner than a lab jacket that has been dragged accross another animal, picking up all kinds of junky crap..
I think there is a misunderstanding here in regards to the alternative to doing surgeries with “bare arms”. The alternative is NOT a lab coat, or even scrubs. The alternative is a special surgical gown that is put through a steam sterilizer before the procedure and not touched by hand at all. It is put on in a sterile manner meaning that nothing and no one touches it. The only thing that the outside of that gown touches is the also sterile drape covering the pet or the sterile surgical area of the pet itself. This is sone for any abdominal procedures or orthopedic procedures where skin cells from your body and even small amounts of bacteria can cause life threatening infections. Just wanted to clarify.
Go to anywhere in the developing world, eastern Europe, Native American reservations, U.S. inner cities, & other places where spay/neuter services are urgently needed & just try to find even the opportunity to use “a special surgical gown that is put through a steam sterilizer before the procedure and not touched by hand at all.” Hypothetical surgeries performed only in Cloud Cuckoo Land don’t count.
180,000 has to be correct. Dr. Young has been practicing longer than I have and I routinely do 35 spay/neuter surgeries a day. 15 minutes is a LONG surgery time for an experienced S/N vet.
Thanks to the vets doing this. Truly a calling for those vets.
Need more than just sterilizing programs… Calgary Alberta has the best Animal Control and it is called the Calgary Model. Pit bulls are welcome and education in the schools is part of the mandate..they do not have stray dogs or too many to rehome..
The claims above about Calgary are both outdated and fallacious. I coined the term “Calgary Model” myself in an October 2000 profile of how Calgary Animal Services operated under then-animal control chief Jerry Aschenbrenner, entitled “Why Calgary has almost as many off-leash parks as dog bites.” Aschenbrenner headed Calgary Animal Services from 1975 until his retirement later in 2000, about five years before pit bulls became a public issue anywhere in Canada. Aschenbrenner’s successor, Bill Bruce, largely dismantled the programs and policies that were successful under Aschenbrenner, moving instead toward a conventional penalty-based animal control model. Bruce opposed breed-specific legislation to curtail pit bull proliferation, with catastrophic consequences, and indeed became a consultant for the pit bull advocacy organization Animal Farm Foundation after his retirement. During the last five years of Bruce’s tenure, as Barbara Kay reported in her October 2014 ANIMALS 24-7 guest column Breed-specific legislation: the view from Montreal, “Dog attacks there went from 58 in 2009 to 201 in 2014, a disproportionate number of them by pit bulls.” Calgary has led Canadian cities in disfiguring dog attacks over the past decade, and is no longer a positive model of anything relevant to animal care and control.
I totally agree with s/n
At a young age before they even have a brief window to breed!
One feral queen can produce upwards of 24 kittens within 3 years! More breeding more, more & more !
We found out the hard way when one was dumped on our farm. It’s disgusting, tiring, expensive not to mention heartwrenching with the death rate of inbreds !
Keep on keeping on!
The cost of S/N is VERY small compared to the cost of owning and caring for the animal over the animal’s lifetime. Anyone who can’t afford S/N can’t afford the animal. I’d like to see S/N be mandatory by law for all PET animals. Anyone who wants to breed should have to get a vet certificate of health, a license, and NOT breed animals like pit bulls who are already glutting shelters. I’d like to see all PET animals sold with a pre-paid S/N certificate good at a local vet clinic worked into the cost upfront.
Coming up with the cost of feeding a dog or cat each week is much easier for people on low and fixed incomes than coming up with the equivalent of several months’ worth of pet food all at once to pay for regular price s/n. Requiring that the price of obtaining a dog or cat include a “pre-paid s/n certificate good at a local vet clinic worked into the cost upfront” has been tried by thousands of animal shelters since 1955, when the first such program we are aware of began in the Los Angeles area, but certificate programs have always had dismayingly low redemption rates, typically less than 40%.
S/N here in northern Ontario can cost $200-300 for spaying a cat. If you can do that operation in 15 minutes, that is big bucks 🙁 Too bad people can’t afford it, and so we have lots of unwanted kittens, feral cats, and bait for the coyotes in winter.
I do have a problem with s/n every pet animal and forcing breeders to submit to more government overreach than is already heaped upon them – personally, every puppy I breed is microchipped with my information and I will always take back any animal I produce – now, if they want to make a law that every puppy is chipped with the breeders info, I am on board!
I do love that Dr Jeff loves the animals!
Of course you want a chip with yoyr name on it. More control for breeders to do whst they do. Mass produce. It’s hypocritical to even discuss s/n with a breeder/puppy mill. One and the same.
The first step to No Kill is no birth. So very absurd to find No Kill’s leadership opposing spay/neuter ordinances.
Well, Del….was going to post this to your page. Knew it was right up your alley (cat)!! Could be you talking!!
😉 Kit Curtin
That is true. Delwin. All of our rescue are S/N before being adopted.
VERY thought-provoking article! I run a small dachshund rescue. We spay/neuter all animals prior to adoption. We do our best, but if all animals were spay/neutered, it is possible that in less than a lifetime our rescue would be defunct….and you know what??? I would be thrilled!!!
It would be amazing if vet techs could obtain a special license to perform spay/neuter surgeries only, with positions similar to those of physician’s assistants or nurse practitioners in human medical practice. Currently, since spay/neuters can only be legally performed by veterinarians, how many can be done is limited.
Kelly, alternatives to surgical sterilization are the only way to solve the worldwide problem of companion animal overpopulation. Organizations such as SpayFirst are doing research and there is already a chemical castration procedure for males using a calcium chloride injection directly into the testicles. It meets the criteria: A single, bilateral intratesticular injection for stray dogs is effective in achieving long-term infertility, inhibits sexual behavior, does not cause chronic stress to the animal, causes few inflammatory reactions, lacks other undesirable side effects, is easily performed, and is economical.
For further information about calcium chloride sterilization, please see NASA finding means calcium chloride castration can be done on Mars, Introducing Calcium Chloride Castration, Calcium chloride chemosterilant tested successfully in tomcats, and Does castration really alter male dog behavior?
This is interesting, but the article on “successful” testing in tomcats only mentions testosterone being reduced. I would be interested in the effects of the injection on undesirable behaviors (like spraying and intercat aggression) and tomcat urine smell as compared to conventionally sterilized animals.
That is a great idea ,
Surgery is best left to veterinarians. Ovariohysterectomies (spays) in particular may be commonplace, but they are a major abdominal surgery with the potential for serious complications. This is not a procedure for support staff, however well trained they may be.
Would love to see more veterinarians getting involved in spay/neuter programs, though.
Well said Dr. Young. Turning away animals and leaving them on the streets to die is not a humane solution. I’m grateful that there are still people like you who understand that there will never really be no-kill without first addressing the very real problem of pet overpopulation.
Thank you for continuing to be a voice of reason, and for your continued work saving animals by curbing pet overpopulation while also teaching so many others to do the same. I wish we had a huge army of people like you, then maybe we could finally finish this battle against pet overpopulation so there would be additional resources available for the education and outreach programs that are so sorely needed.
Well said Lisa! In Austin Texas, the petri dish for No Kill , our municipal shelter has become a closed intake shelter. Their doors were closed last year for 8 of 52 weeks. They have placed impediments to owner surrender. It can take up to six weeks to surrender an owned animal. In Texas it’s easier to surrender custody of a child under six months old than it is to surrender custody of an owned cat or dog in Austin.
Those policies have led to people surrendering cats and dogs to the high killl shelters surrounding Austin and to just dumping on the streets or out in the county some where.
Austin’s version of No Kill is nothing more than outsourced euthanasia. It should be renamed “Euthanasia by Proxy.”
Thank you Dr. Young and Merritt & Beth Clifton for continuing to champion the truth.
I was agreeing as I began your article. Why did you have to bring up the ‘old fat white guy’ thing? You appear to be white, you are a guy, if lucky you will be old. Health or circumstances might make you fat some day. Some of my dearest are ofwg.
Nancy Drew —- I too was extremely offended by that racist comment. He implies that there are never any old fat black guys that are just as “money grubbing” as white ones??? Most ALL veterinarians are for profit away over the “caring for animals part.” This includes vets of all colours and either sex, fat, thin, or just right, so ya….it was also a sexist remark. Thank you for raising that point – it grated on me like metal on metal.
Not a racist comment. Reality is that the AVMA has been controlled by old fat white guys. They have been very resistance to change. They have never been much interested in overpopulation issues. Hell, it was just a few years ago that they decided that maybe leg hold traps are inhumane. The reality of life is people seeking those kind of positions are less motivated to change things and more like your average politician. In any event, with more women in the profession, the AVMA has been forced to change, even if still too slowly for me, and since I am an old fat white guy, I feel comfortable using the term..
Alexandre Liautard, the French-born and trained founder and first president of the American Veterinary Medical Association, as dean of the New York University Veterinary College for 25 years, 1868-1893, urged generations of veterinarians to begin doing spay/neuter and high-volume anti-rabies vaccination, to little avail. Frustrated by the opposition of the veterinary and humane establishments, including American SPCA founder Henry Bergh, Liautard eventually retired back to Paris, after which the New York University Veterinary College became the New York State College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University in Ithaca. Long outliving all of the other AVMA cofounders, Liautard nearly survived the deprivations of World War I as well, but died in 1918, shortly before the fighting ended. The AVMA finally approved the s/n operations as Liautard taught them in 1923. The American Humane Association did not begin to endorse s/n until 1973, five years after the American SPCA began doing high-volume, low-cost s/n, 16 years after Friends of Animals opened the first high-volume, low-cost s/n clinic in the U.S.
Dr. Jeff Young, I love and agree with every single word of your article. My problem- I’ve been contributing $20.00/ mo every month, for years, to both the ASPCA and the US Humane Society, or $480.00 year because that’s all I can afford on my fixed income. I deeply believe in S/N and would like to switch this contribution over toS/N instead. How do I do this locally?
I live in Asheville, NC where a brand new gorgeous shelter was built several years ago near Fletcher, NC but am sure that they too are only sheltering even though their animals (but not the pit bulls) are already S/N before they are (quickly) adopted. Who can I donate to for just S/ N?
Asheville is the national headquarters of The Humane Alliance, the organization that does more s/n nationwide than any other.
In the past the vast majority of veterinarians were white males – the reference is basically fact, not raciat
I am in a low poverty area in San Benito, Texas. I moved here from Illinois eight years ago. I have transported over 1,500 dogs out of this hell since November 2013 to loving homes, on donations and out of pocket. Free vet care is needed here, but does not exist.
Excellent!! Thank you!
I had the pleasure of getting to know Jeff Young about 18 years ago when he came to India at the invitation of the Blue Cross of India to train vets in early-age neutering. His skills are truly amazing with a spay taking only about 10 minutes and a neuter much less.
India is the only country in the world where the law requires that municipal bodies must only resort to S/N to control street dog population but, sadly, most municipalities are yet to take up proper S/N programmes though organised killing has more or less stopped in the 16 years since the Animal Birth Control Rules were passed.
Also, unfortunately, early age neutering of street dogs is not yet legal in India – I know the law needs to be changed.
Turkey, since 2004, has also required use of s/n to control the street dog population. The Turkish law was adopted several years after Jeff Young spent a few days teaching high-volume s/n procedure in Istanbul, the Turkish capital city.
The voice of reason at last. One small problem. I am in Las Vegas, Nevada. There is no mega-spay neuter clinic operated by the Animal Foundation.
Not now. But there was a mega-spay/neuter clinic in Las Vegas, operated by the Animal Foundation and emulated by other spay/neuter programs around the world, from 1989 to 2001. In 1995, unfortunately, the Animal Foundation changed directions, after hosting more than 50,000 s/n surgeries, and built the Lied Animal Shelter in order to take over the Las Vegas animal control contract, as part of an amibitious plan to make Las Vegas a no-kill city. By the end of 2001 the high-volume, low-cost spay/neuter program was suspended for budgetary reasons, a casualty of the high-tech stock crash of early 2001 and the fundraising slump that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Without the high-volume, low-cost sterilization program, the attempt to go no-kill came to grief. More than 1,000 dogs and cats were euthanized to stop severe disease outbreaks at the Lied Animal Shelter in February 2007. I had warned the Animal Foundation management that this would happen, in depth and detail, in a lengthy e-mail sent on September 18, 2002.
When I got involved in 2008 Lied was simply a killing factory. At that time I did some calculations and figured we would need a new no-kill shelter opened twice a week every week for the next ten years to house all of the animals they were killing. I would expect that most places are similar. Do the math, spay/neuter is the only way out. Since then we have targeted the TNR of entire feral colonies. The groups outside the shelter doing the work have TNRed about 50,000 cats. The shelter euthanasia of cats has dropped by 85%. This drop is driven by reductions in admissions. The vast majority of that without changes at the shelter. The animals need to be managed in the community where they live. Only a small percentage ever see the shelter. Focusing on shelter animals is only sustainable harvesting, not managing the animals in the community.
This is a very good article and worthy of real consideration. The cost of a glitzy no kill shelter with gorgeous walls and unique aesthetics could pay for a lot of spay neuters… good point.
Dr Jeff, I whole-heartedly agree 100% with everything you stated in this article. I myself was with a cat rescue group in upstate New York, fostering as well as serving on the executive board. As you stated, “Smaller rescue groups often lean toward the ‘animal collecting business,’ and are often poorly run and set up by self-gratifying little chieftains.” This is exactly what happened and that is why I resigned. My specialty was bottle feeding and caring for the tiny day and week old newborns. All of their care was in my home. I would care for 2 to 5 in a litter. I would also foster kittens. Educating people about spay/neuter in a group setting never seemed to be on the agenda. Our local SPCA executive director, as well as a couple other employees, stole over $600,000 from the shelter and are now undergoing criminal prosecution. It’s all a mess and the animals continue to suffer. I have helped other rescue groups with a couple litters of babies since I left, but it is hard financially to care for them without help from private donations and grants, as KMR, Royal Canin Baby Cat, and vetting are costly if they are sick. One of the litters I recently cared for cost me $347 to take to the vet (4 kittens) because they were sick with severe diarrhea that came about all of a sudden. The vet charged me an office visit charge for each kitten. They were put on Metronidazole and she did a stool sample which I brought as a combined one. As the kittens were eight weeks old, I also had them FeLV/FIV tested. I have been very lucky, I guess, because in the over eight years I have been working in rescue, I have only lost three babies and they were dying when I got them. As much as taking care of these tiny babies pulls at my heartstrings, I cannot afford to continue to help. Please keep up the good work you do and I look forward to the next season of your show, Dr. Jeff Rocky Mountain Vet.
THANK YOU! Finally someone says it like it is…..I’ve spent my life working with animals and am just disgusted at the “no kill” trend. Warehousing animals is sickening and a humane euthanasia is BY FAR the kinder option.
And bravo, you are so right. Big shelters expenses should be put towards low cost or free sterilization. It is the only answer.
Humans are stupid and greedy. Because of this sad fact, there will never be a lack of unwanted pets. The only possible way to minimize the carnage is to spay and neuter, and the only way to encourage that is by subsidizing it.
If humans really were greedy, one household in four in the U.S. would not be donating toward animal welfare and animal rights causes, and humane work would not have become a multi-billion-dollar industry. “Stupid” is also a harsh word for what is in truth mostly just being misinformed, most egregiously by much of the humane and veterinary establishment leadership, as Jeff Young points out.
I run a medium sized dog rescue in the midwest. We insist that all dogs be spayed and neutered prior to adoption, including puppies. Most of our vets oblige but some still stick to the old idea that a dog must be 6 months old before they have the surgery. As soon as I say we will take the pup to another vet they then change their tune. They like our dollars too much. We will not allow any of our dogs to contribute to the overpopulation problem.
Excellent article and sympathetic to having to choose the cost of feeding vs cost of s/n…but if you cannot afford the procedure you probably can’t afford the pet. What happens if you have a limited budget? Going on Facebook to solicit advice because you can’t afford a vet visit is not a viable solution. Too many armchair vets making diagnoses and treatment recommendations based on personal/limited experience. I am sure many animals suffer because of this.
Reality is, like it or not, that low-income people have dogs and cats, and in the U.S. have a right to keep them, safeguarded by a variety of federal legislation and court decisions. Either those people and their animals will be served by low-cost vet clinics, or they will not be served at all, and society will suffer the consequences. Fantasize though some people might about taking the right of pet-keeping from the poor, this will not be a possibility until & unless the Ninth Amendment is revoked, along with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Housing Act, and two centuries’ worth of relevant jurisprudence.
Sometimes a pet is all these people have, and (particularly in the case of cats) the pet may not necessarily have been a planned acquisition. I have worked with many older individuals on fixed incomes who ended up with the neighborhood stray nobody else was willing to take in. These cats may be eating inexpensive foods, and the owners may have to make a difficult decision when faced with a costly procedure or a chronic condition later down the line… but they are in a safe environment where they are loved (often by someone who spends much of their time at home), and they are receiving the basic necessities. It may not be a perfect situation, but it is a win for the owners, and, ultimately, the cats. And it is keeping these animals out of an already overburdened shelter system. I would argue that it is better to go at twelve because your owner couldn’t afford to manage diabetes than to go at two because you’re a black domestic shorthair in a kill shelter.
In a 2003-2004 study on animals in rural poverty, we collected data from almost 3000 low-income rural homes that had pets altered through our program. We asked them to name the source of the pet. 61% responded that they had obtained the pet as a stray (that can include a neighbor moving away and leaving pets behind).
Feeding the animal was an act of compassion, not irresponsibility. While 61% is extreme as compared to the US overall, it is not extreme for the tiny impoverished towns that dot the entire south and southern mid-west.
I live in the real world. Many people should not have children, but they do. There are many health benefits to keeping pets also. Besides, the human medical profession has non-profit hospitals and inner city care centers; why does the vet profession stay in the 1950s? If as a profession we want you to care for your pet as a member of your family (5-star client), but then you can’t afford some emergency procedure, we will happily kill your pet for you. But I suppose only rich people should have cars, phones, houses and children also. This is a very slippery slope. If you don’t want to help with low-cost work, no problem, but the vet profession has actively pushed back hard on vets doing this kind of work. I don’t push that easy but your local humane group probably does.
Great article, and another reason to donate local and see where your money is going!!
Please don’t forget to donate to ANIMALS 24-7. Your donations are what keeps us going, providing an appreciative forum for contributors like Jeff Young –– and you can see where the money goes, as our IRS Form 990 filings are all online, the most recent at How do you tell ANIMALS 24-7 from Donald Trump?
“The only light I see in the veterinary industry is that we graduate more women than men these days, of course much to the dismay of all the old, fat white guys in the three piece suits. These women are actually forcing compassionate changes in the industry.”
Women could be the driving force behind the no-kill “above ground cemetery” problem. When it comes to animal hoarding, women represent 75% of the culprits and despite all of that hard science education, the veterinary industry is the greatest denier of genetics, but ONLY when it comes to the aggression of pit bulls. There is still widespread agreement that chis, cockers and doxies are aggressive.
Female veterinarian here (albeit one who only works with cats now). My personal belief is that animals in need of adoption should be evaluated by individual temperament, not breed. I have seen Golden Retrievers that would make your hair stand on end, know a groomer who was disfigured by a Bichon, and have met wonderful examples of all the breeds listed above. Excessive focus on the breed (outside of pressuring those doing the breeding to avoid passing on the genes of ill-tempered animals, and refusing to enable millers and poor breeding operations) gives a false sense of security, IMO.
We also need to do a better job of cracking down on rescues adopting out aggressive pets (another unintended consequence of the push towards no-kill) and those that have not been properly evaluated for potential temperament issues. This is a very real problem. It is not good for the public, not good for the veterinary profession, and an absolute PR disaster for the shelter/rescue system that undoubtedly results in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of deserving animals because people are afraid to adopt.
I have logged more than 7,500 fatal and disfiguring dog attack cases in the U.S. and Canada since 1982. In all that time no verified fatal or disfiguring attacks by Bichons have been reported. The same can be said for setters, among the 10 most popular breeds for more than 115 years now, and for approximately 25% of all recognized dog breeds. Four fatalities and 11 disfigurements have been attributed to golden retrievers and their mixes, a breed type outnumbering pit bulls until recent years. More than 5,000 pit bulls, meanwhile, have killed at least 370 people and disfigured more than 4,600––about 70% of all dog attack deaths and disfigurements. Rottweilers and bull mastiffs inflict similarly disproportionate numbers of fatalities and disfigurements. All of this suggests that evaluators are paying much too little attention to breed-specific characteristics.
Nathan Winograd and his cult of deranged followers are much to blame for the No Kill notion that quantity, not quality of life is paramount – NOT!!!!! As a hands-on volunteer on cruelty seizures – including many “No Kill Rescues” gone very bad, AND a community outreach volunteer for a organization that provides FREE S/N for area residents, I truly believe S/N is the only logical /economical solution to euthanasia for space.
I volunteer for a small no-kill dog/cat rescue group in Hot Springs, Arkansas, called Paws and Claws. We do about 4-5 low cost spay/neuter clinics a year and give priority to low and fixed income people. We do between 40-60 dogs and cats in one day with one veterinarian and one tech and the rest volunteers from our group. We charge the public $20 for each pet. Our group covers the rest of the cost with donations. We also take in stray dogs, cats and puppies, kittens, get them fully vetted and microchipped and adopt them out both locally and by sending them up north. With the money we get from adoptions fees and donations we are able to keep doing this year round. In the years we have been operating we have spayed and neutered thousands. There is another humane society in Saline County, Arkansas, that does monthly clinics. We cannot stop the back yard breeders and puppy mills in our state. Until all cities, large and small, make spay/neuter a law, we will never be able to catch up, no matter how hard we and others try. Thank you for helping to spread the message
Thought provoking words, but with two by lines at the top of the page, it is unclear who wrote this. Please clarify.
Web convention, established over more than two decades now, is that author identity, in this case Jeff Young, is stated in large black type; the identity of the person posting an item appears in smaller type, in red.
Wonderful article. I agree whole-heartedly and would like to add that I strongly believe that laws need to be changed as well. If cities adopted better laws regarding spay and neutering and made it mandatory within city limits that would drastically reduce population over time. The revenue collected by citing offenders would help offset the cost of caring for the ones in shelters. It would prevent back yard breeders from selling puppies or kittens publicly on sites such as Craigslist. Citations could also help to fund education which is equally important.
As a matter of constitutional law, upheld by a variety of court decisions over the past 150 years or so, no level of government can make spaying or neutering pets mandatory. This can be regulated in various ways, including with breed-specific legislation allowing most dogs but prohibiting possession of pit bulls, but there always must be exemptions allowing for breeding permits if possession of the type of animal in question is legal in the first place, since the right to breed animals was an uncontested “right of the people” when the U.S. constitution was adopted in 1789.
Very interesting article! Thanks for writing it. I’m a little unsure of this sentiment though: “but I personally have never seen a no-kill shelter that wasn’t overtly practicing cruelty to animals or was at best neglectful in their care. And yes, this includes some of the large no-kill shelters worth millions of dollars.”
I suppose it depends on a definition of no-kill, but there are many great very low kill shelters that do not practice cruelty or neglect. They are still a minority, but they exist.
When tuition/scholarship funds are given to students of veterinary medical degree programs, why can’t there be a requirement attached that requires students to complete a certain number of S/N procedures within a certain time frame in order to receive the completed funds or scholarship for the degree? If this aid was built in to degree programs up front, and during their education time, then students would not feel as if they are giving away their earning hours for “charity” once graduated. Their volunteer time would be part of their degree program. I know vet techs who are more trained and experienced with S/N than new vets, because that’s their work already.
Many veterinary schools already require, or at least strongly recommend, that student vets perform spay/neuter surgeries to develop their surgical skills, instead of participating in the “wet labs” using healthy animals that were formerly a routine part of veterinary traning, but are now rarely done (and are no longer done at all at most of the best vet schools worldwide.) However, student vets should not be performing s/n surgeries (or any other surgeries) without appropriate veterinary supervision. Further, student vets cannot be expected to perform surgeries with anything like the speed and efficiency of spay/neuter specialists such as Jeff Young.
It is legal for anyone in our state to do almost anything to animals on their own farms. They castrate, c-section, amputate tails… Why wouldn’t it be possible to train some of us as veterinary equivalents to nurse practitioners or physician assistants, and teach us to spay and neuter? There are so many of us with tech degrees or nursing degrees who would be willing to give our time and go out onto the field and spay and neuter.
Two memes recently circulating among no-kills on social media spring to mind while reading this article. One has a repurposed image of Rosie the Riveter with the slogan, “Yes we can adopt our way out of killing!!” Another has a picture of a cat with the slogan, “If you think we can save them all, you’re OUR KIND of crazy.”
It’s essentially a form of anti-intellectualism that we’re seeing frequently in politics as well.
I appreciate your speaking out when so many choose to hide from the truth. As long as people allow the production of dogs and cats to be greater then the demand there will be animals senselessly euthanized. I have not nor ever will support the no-kill movement. Since when does placement of all adoptable animals equate to no-kill? It is just a marketing tool to collect money and buffer the public from bearing the effects of problem. And there will never be enough warehouse space (aka prisons) to house the continuing accumulation of the excess. I’ve been involved in animal rescue for over 40 years working from rescue, rehab, rehome and humane education. I am always amazed how may people complain about the high cost of veterinarian services, but carry Iphones, wear name brand clothing, and spend high prices for entertainment and sports. I feel owning a pet comes with much responsibility and commitment. Asking Vets or other industry services to be free is disrespectful. However, if one wishes to help, support qualified organizations or your vet that help deter the expenses. As I see it, the only victims are the animals.
When the original No Kill Conference series started, in 1995, developing programs to rehome all adoptable animals was among the critical needs and goals of the cause. Ramping up spay/neuter programs to avoid producing a perpetual surplus of both adoptable and unadoptable animals was another critical need and goal. Extending spay/neuter programs to reduce the numbers of feral cats was yet another critical need and goal. As keynote speaker at the first No Kill Conference, I addressed all three of these critical needs and goals, and went on to emphasize that among them, filling the critical needs and reaching the goals could only get us about three-quarters of the way to achieving genuine no-kill animal control. To get all the way, we would have to stop the breeding and proliferation of dangerous dogs, especially but not exclusively pit bulls; eradicate canine rabies from the U.S.; and prevent animal hoarding. Providing longterm care to large numbers of unadoptable animals could never be a primary goal of an effective no-kill sheltering system. Rather, the numbers of unadoptable animals would have to be reduced drastically through the combination of high-volume, low-cost sterilization; effective and strictly enforced breed-specific legislation; and effective outreach programs to help keep healthy animals in homes and keep animals in homes healthy. Of these further goals, only eradicating canine rabies from the U.S. has actually been achieved, albeit tenuously, because it can come back with foreign “rescues” that have been poorly vetted or not vetted at all. Pit bull proliferation, animal hoarding, and keeping outdoor pet pets in the name of neuter/return have actually found protective cover beneath the “no-kill” banner, much to the detriment of no-kill organizations which are serious about rehoming only safe dogs and providing quality care to all animals they receive. None of this was ever what no-kill was supposed to be about.
Great article! Interesting perspective. I love our local humane society, but I’ve often seen the similarities between retail and the shelter….it is like a business and there are many salaries to pay at the shelter, so marketing to the public and having inventory to choose from are critical you know. Ours is not a no-kill, but has a 99% adoption rate for dogs. I love this about them. They fly planeloads full of dogs in to re-stock the inventory, like a retail store. This has a place, too. I do feel like having a beautiful facility is a good thing. I’m not sure our community is going to donate to spay/neuter programs where they are most needed, like in the South, but they do get excited about improving things in our own community, so if a beautiful facility can have a modern low cost clinic to spay/neuter more than they already do, so, I’m all for that. While S/N is free for some, and low cost for others, I love the idea of SN being free for all who desire it and no intimidating paperwork….keep it simple. Your insight, from being on the front line, has given me lots to think about. I own a pet sitting company and we donate to the shelter regularly, but this has me thinking more on how to designate these donations. Thanks for the honest, thought provoking insights.
Rock on Dr. Jeff you are preaching what I have been stating for years!!!!
Our local Humane Association of offering spay/neuters for $10.00. We are Giles County Humane Association in Pulaski, TN. Only requirement is to be a resident of Giles County.
Hey old fat white guy. I bet I paid 4-5 times for my veterinary degree and I bet I’m paying double the interest rate you paid for your loans. So, being that I owe $200,000…I think I’m entitled to make 1/4 of what a human doctor with the same level of education makes. If people think that makes me money hungry… they can go to hell.
If you believe you are “entitled” to anything just because you exist, you have an attitude that does not belong in any caring, healing, or public service occupation.
Once again, not a problem, if you want to practice high-end stuff and make money, but don’t be running down and trying to make it hard on me and other low-cost places. There is plenty of room for all, and for the record i make a good living; I just work harder than you. This is my choice. But in the end it should be the large humane groups that build clinics and hire vets at a good salary, and should be doing the work I have done for the last 27 years. For the record, I love competition.
We welcome a visit to our no kill shelter…any time‼ Aurora, Nebraska, USA ‼‼
Pretty much on point about the no kill shelters. Humane and animal welfare organizations should take the responsibility for educating/encouraging/marketing to the public and leave the medicine/surgery to veterinarians. Creating entire clinics for s/n when many private, full service clinics already existed, is a waste of effort and money. Also, means testing for those people & animals that truly deserve rather than the financially able preying on the cheap clinics is needed. Their greed diverts assets that would have been available for shelter animals or people who genuinely cannot afford s/n. Cannot tell you how many times people that had to “get a ride” have been turned away when we saw 10 or more folks driving late model suvs with their purebred dogs to the s/n clinic I work at most of the time. Turns my stomach.
This comment misses several key points. First, most private full-service clinics are very poorly organized to do high-volume, low-cost s/n, and could not begin to compete with clinics such as Jeff Young’s Planned Pethood Plus and the best nonprofit clinics even if they tried. High-volume, low-cost s/n is a specialty, not something just any vet can jump into and do efficiently and well. Second, people delivering dogs to low-cost clinics in “late model suvs” are quite often volunteers for local humane societies, helping indigent clients. Allegations about affluent people abusing low-cost s/n programs have been around as long as low-cost s/n clinics themselves, but I have taken the opportunity to follow up (and in some cases literally follow) the allegedly affluent people in “late model suvs” several times in several different places, and every time found a dedicated volunteer spending his/her own money to help strays, feral cats, and the pets of the poor at the other end of the transaction.
Thank you from The Ruff Start New Beginnings dog rescue
Ont Canada
Not fair to come down on all no kill shelters.I volunteer at a great one. Where would the lost and stray ones go? Where would the ones removed from cruel situations go? All the animals adopted out are fixed. True we need to stop all the animals from reproducing. We need to stop the other big supply of animals from breeders. Shelters are reducing numbers but breeders just keep adding to the problem.. People need to be educated about the horrors of puppy mills. Better to donate to a good shelter than support breeders.
No-kill shelters rarely receive “lost and stray” animals, who by law are usually supposed to go first to an animal control shelter for identification and possible reclaim, before being made available for rehoming or transfer to another shelter. No-kill shelters also do not receive animals “removed from cruel situations.” If animals are impounded in connection with a cruelty or neglect case, they are evidence, and must be kept by an agency with law enforcement authority until they are either relinquished by the owner or released from custody of the law enforcement agency by judicial order. Only then can those animals be rehomed or transferred.
It is critical to understand that very few “no-kill” shelters do primary intake, i.e. receiving animals under any circumstance directly from the public. Most “no-kill” shelters are populated chiefly by animals “pulled” from open-admission animal control shelters at the expiry of holding periods now averaging about two weeks (up from the five days or sometimes less that was the standard holding time from circa 1966 to circa 1996.)
Breeders are not the problem. How many times have you heard someone say “Oh, well, we’re just going to let our cat have one or two litters so our kids can watch and learn about birthing and reproduction”? I’ve heard this dozens of times and no, they had no plans or takers for the kittens either. There is also the misconception that allowing a pet to reproduce once or twice before being altered makes a better “post-altering” personality. Reputable cat breeders are registered, licensed, educated about cats’ genetics and their health problems, and work closely with their vets. They also keep their shots all up to date and will take back any kitten who is not wanted for any reason by the purchaser. Most breeders require proof of spay/neuter before any papers are provided as proof of being purebred. Kittens are sold with many contracts such as requiring the kitten to be raised indoors, requiring proof of spay/neuter at appropriate age, and a NO-DECLAW contract is signed with the purchaser. I assure you, breeders are NOT the problem with overpopulation of cats.
I was TNR-ing cats for seven years full time and meanwhile postponing my job searh and jeopardizing many things in my life trying to save lives. In the last few years I got more and more tired of it for different reasons. I concluded without reading any article that what the small and the big rescue groups and the community is doing so far will not stop the pet overpopulation. The only thing that might stop it is the mandatory spay/neuter and ISAR promotes it. Or as your article suggests very intensive spay/neuter by humane groups and the shelter and hopefully, kind hearted veterinarians like yourself. I was wondering why for decades nobody could solve the pet overpopulation problem in the US and at the same time, I was thinking the same thing what you described why nobody solved it so far. I was wondering why The Humane Society of the U.S., ASPCA, Best Friends Animal Society, and No Kill Advocacy Center are against mandatory spay/neuter or spay/neuter ordinances. Very few people are TNR-ing at different rescues intensively and effectively. The RTF effort of the county shelter serves just very small part of cat colonies in the cities that are full of stray and feral cats.
As already explained above, in reply to Danelle Owenby, U.S. constitutional law, upheld by a variety of court decisions over the past 150 years or so, requires that no level of government can make spaying or neutering pets mandatory. S/N can be regulated and encouraged in various ways, including with breed-specific legislation allowing most dogs but requiring sterilization of pit bulls, or by outright banning pit bulls, but there always must be exemptions allowing for breeding permits if possession of the type of animal in question is legal in the first place. This is because the right to breed animals was an uncontested “right of the people” when the U.S. constitution was adopted in 1789, and is therefore protected by the 9th Amendment.
There is no magic bullet. The animals in the community need to be managed with a comprehensive vision and plan. Regulated spay/neuter, TNR, SNR, RTF, shelter policies, are all components of an overall vision and plan. Unfortunately, far too much time is spent arguing over the one approach that is best rather than working together on an overall vision. Nobody can solve the pet overpopulation problem. However, we can all solve it if we work together.
Note that “Regulated spay/neuter, TNR, SNR, RTF” all center on sterilizing animals. None of these approaches center on warehousing animals & promoting adoptions of animals who cannot be adopted out safely.
Merritt Clifton-
For those of us new to this site (but happy to find it), please print here or at least e-mail me with the full words for TNR,
SNR and RTF.
Thank you and gratitude for the work you do to help so many dogs and (to me, very precious) cats.
TNR = Trap, Neuter, Return. SNR = “Spay/Neuter, Return.” TNVR = Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate, Return. “RTF” = Return to Field, presumably after sterilization and vaccination. Why do we have so many different abbreviations for essentially the same thing? Turf wars, basically, among the different organizations involved, all of whom want their own term to become the “brand name” for the procedure.
Jeez Keith several cities, counties and states have solved the animal problem. They are importing adoptable animals from areas like Austin where it’s bogged down in their Euthanasia by Proxy ( No Kill) program
It is pretty basic. An animal that is not born to start with is much easier to deal with that one that is born. The places that are importing adoptable animals have come to grips with the reproduction issue. No place that I am aware of is warehousing unadoptable animals and importing more.
Keith, so what do you think the so called No Kill humane societies are doing with the unadoptable stray cats that are brought to them? Do you think they manage to place all of them in barns as mousers?
I do know what is done with a lot of them. One of the groups here has what is called “the basement”. A place where unadoptable animals go and sit in tiny cages until they die of disease or old age. “No Kill” does not mean humane. Trying to match the reproductive potential of our communities cats and dogs with humane solutions is a hopeless cause. The math just doesn’t work. In our case there is a market for 20,000 to 30,000 pet cats a year. Our feral population was able to produce 400,000 kittens a year. That is about a 20 to 1 supply and demand mismatch. Half of the kittens died before two months and 90% by one year. The handful that were euthanized in the shelter had it better than the truly awful way the ones that never saw the shelter died. The animals need to be managed where the real suffering is happening, out in the community. Such a small percentage end up in the shelter that what happens in the shelter is a trivial part of the overall situation. For me the shelter animals are off the table. I spend my time out in the community stopping the reproduction so they never end up in the shelter.
Delwin, do you know which cities, counties, and states have solved the animal problem and how did they solve it? I know last year Belgium in Europe enacted the mandatory spay/neuter.
King County (Seattle suburbs) in Washington, for starters. Passed a spay neuter ordiance in 1992 . Did very strict enforcement. By 2002 the number of animals entering their shelter dropped by 50% . By 2012 by 75%. But what is really significant at least to me is the number they scraped up dead off the road dropped by 90% in 10 years, where it’s pretty much stabilized. They don’t have loose and stray cats and dogs everywhere. After watching Austin’s No Kill program and seeing how they close the shelter to surrender , how they place impediments to owner surrender and then brag about being No Kill? I think we should start focusing on the number of animals killed on the streets. That number truely measures a shelters success. That means they aren’t doing what Austin does which is adopt out any animal to anyone sober enough to fill out an application and they aren’t dumping 1000’s of cats back out onto the street. Last year Austin dumped over 1000 shelter cats back on the streets. This included 7 year old house cats and 3 month old kittens.
Like most and perhaps all other such ordinances, the King County spay/neuter ordinance, passed in 1992, is actually just differential licensing with an unusually high fee for licensing an unsterilized dog or cat. Neither was the King County ordinance vigorously or successfully enforced until 2015, when King County began buying data collected from supermarket cash registers to identify pet owners, who were then targeted with mailings. Meanwhile, the King County ordinance did not demonstrably reduce either shelter intake or shelter killing. In fact, the King County rate of shelter killing per 1,000 human residents, low when the sterilization ordinance passed, barely declined at all in the next 15 years, while the declines in intake reported in King County only mirror the declines achieved all around the U.S. and trail the results achieved in Seattle and several other western Washington counties. (Incidentally, we are not aware of any systematic and consistent studies of roadkill pickup done in this entire region.
The myth of King County success survived, despite a 1994 statistical critique by the late Robert Lewis Plumb, a pioneering analyst of shelter statistics who was instrumental in introducing low-cost s/n to northern California. A 1997 King County audit found that the King County animal control department was chronically underfunded. Little was done about that. Then a veterinarian in October 1998 complained in writing to the King County council about extensive neglect of animal health and well-being in the King County shelters.
Little was done about that, either, until No Kill Advocacy Center founder Nathan Winograd arrived at invitation of a 10-member King County Animal Care & Control Citizens Advisory Committee and exposed the whole situation in a 147-page inspection report delivered in March 2008. Winograd in his first book, Redemption, had expressed skepticism of the value of the King County licensing ordinance, based on a data analysis similar to Plumb’s. Once Winograd actually spent time in the King County shelters, he found much more wrong than just an inflated sense of achievement. Winograd was visibly shocked and upset when he described his findings to me soon after one of his shelter visits, and so was the community when the key findings of his report were amplified by both the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Times.
Unfortunately, Winograd went on from there to discount the entire value of promoting s/n. His subsequent influence in devaluing s/n could, therefore, be blamed in large part on the longtime over-selling and misrepresentation of the King County experience.
Thank you for the information about King County shelter. So, the so called “mandatory” differential licensing did not work at the beginning perhaps because it was not enforced. I know it’s working now in Riverside County shelter in LA (but just with dogs and not the cats) because they have extra officers who go door to door in poor areas. There is a problem now in Martinez County shelter (Contra Costa County) in East Bay of San Francisco. Appr. 2 years ago, volunteers tried to turn the shelter into No Kill after the shelter director retired and they were looking for a new director who would embrace No Kill philosophy. They had some success in the first year with No Kill but at this point, the volunteers are demanding change again from Board of Supervisors because they do not think the new director’s work is satisfactory. The Board of Supervisors replied this time that Martinez never will be a No Kill shelter. I think if somebody approaches them with new ideas like yours (more low cost spay/neuter within the shelter, ”mandatory” differential licensing and enforcement, etc.) they might listen. I think they have a $12 million budget for the shelter. Do you do counseling for a fee? Here is a link to the last Board of Supervisors meeting where a few volunteers expressed their concerns:
https://www.facebook.com/SavetheContraCostaCountyShelterDogs/?ref=page_internal
Quite a lot of research done over the past four decades shows that licensing differentials have very limited utility in encouraging s/n. Basically, they work when the s/n rate is lower than the licensing rate, and work best when the licensing differential is about $40. Higher differentials discourage licensing; lower differentials cost more to enforce than they recover in licensing fees. The introduction of differential licensing in the 1980s was instrumental in helping to make s/n the U.S. social norm. However, since the U.S. sterilization rate for dogs is now above 70%, albeit only about 20% for pit bulls, and for owned cats is upward of 85%, while the licensing rate for dogs is under 25% and for cats is negligible, it is questionable whether differential licensing at any differential level really has anything further to contribute to increasing the s/n rate. “Pet overpopulation” in the traditional sense ceased to exist in the U.S. long ago. What we now have is overpopulation of pit bulls, most of whom were never well-socialized longterm household pets in the first place, and outdoor cats, most of whom were never pets for whom anyone ever took responsibility, albeit that about two-thirds are from time to time fed by humans.
I do not agree with the second part of your last sentence: “What we now have is overpopulation of … and outdoor cats, most of whom were never anyone’s pets at all.” This sounds like what I’ve read on Alley Cat Allies website. From my TNR experience, there are much more stray cats (cats that were owned) than feral cats in a colony in residential areas. especially areas where mainly blue collar workers live (and you cannot say these are poor people). In addition. most of these people still do not fix their cat and many times, they feed them and let them have kittens. Or they abandon unfixed cats which then have litter after litter and colonies are formed. How else can you explain that certain cities in San Francisco East Bay like Pittsburg, Antioch, San Pablo, Richmond are full of stray cats? That’s why we would need mandatory ordinances and low cost spay/neuter clinics.
You did not pay attention to what I wrote, which was almost exactly what you just complained about. I’ll put it in bold this time: “outdoor cats, most of whom were never pets for whom anyone ever took responsibility, albeit that about two-thirds are from time to time fed by humans.” These are “stray cats (cats that were owned),” in the sense that they were and are often fed and semi-socialized. But they are not “pets” for whom anyone takes responsibility. Because no one acknowledges owning them, even “mandatory” s/n of pets, which is not a constitutional possibility in the U.S. anyhow, would accomplish nothing to reduce their numbers.
The reason why various very large rescue groups are opposed to legislative spay/neuter is very simple. “$”. That’s the mystery variable that pretty much solves any kind of problem where the answers don’t make sense. In Austin, Texas our largest rescue group is getting free rent from the city on some of the most expensive property in Austin . They have a multimillion dollar budget. Their upper management and executive staff are paid very good salaries. Nathan Winograd, the founder of No Kill Solutions and the No Kill Advocacy Center, is making a very good living selling his product, “No Kill.” Ask yourself this one simple question: “What happens to those organizations? What happens to those very nice salaries when there is no longer a surplus of cats and dogs?”
The 85% sterilization rate for owned cats sounds to me little high. I know many people still do not fix their cats and even dogs. That’s the only reason why so many stray cat colonies exist in certain cities. And if mandatory or some kind of regulated sterilization of cats is not possible in the US, then, the cat overpopulation will never be handled satisfactorily in these cities. To control the population, lots of TNR, TNRM (trap/neuter/return/manage), SNR, RTF is needed and who will do it? Many volunteers stop doing TNR because it’s very time consuming and if you manage the colony, you have to spend on food and put up with many people who complain about feeding (many times it’s not possible to continue TNRM for this reason). If the community is doing the trapping and brings the cats to low cost spay/neuter centers, then, most of the time the individuals do not trap and fix all the cats and the reproduction cycle starts soon again. The best is the TNRM because that way you can really control the colony and over years there is less and less cats. Plus, if you do not feed the stray and feral cats, what’s the average life span?
A variety of surveys over the years have demonstrated that the owned cat population rate is 90%-plus in most of the big east and west coast cities, where more than 80% of the cats are indoor-only, but drops to about 70% in the less affluent urban, suburban, and rural parts of the U.S. South and Southwest. Feral cat populations tend to be self-replenishing above the snowbelt; self-replenishing & producing a surplus below the snowbelt. In no part of the U.S. need the bona fide feral cat population be replenished continually by formerly owned strays to persist; but the population of formerly owned or fed-but-not-claimed outdoor cats is continually replenished by births and abandonments. Bona fide feral cats, the cats for whom the TNR approach was designed, are self-sufficient mousers, and need no feeding whatever from humans. If they are fed, however, they may lose their self-sufficiency, and instead of remaining furtive nocturnal solitary rodent hunters, may become diurnal and social, hanging around in groups awaiting feeding and hunting birds for sport. This is when neuter/return fails and comes under political attack. Bottom line: if outdoor cats are dependent on feeding, they are not authentically feral, and though they should be sterilized, are not cats who are well-integrated into their habitat.
An 85% rate of spay/neuter for all cats and dogs is claimed by the High Priests and Priestesses of Austin, Texas’s No Kill cult. It sounds wonderful but there is a problem with that number; there is nothing to base it on. Austin does not require pet registration. While the No Kill shills like to lay that number out as the reason Austin doesn’t need a differential licensing ordiance; they have no scientific data to base that number on. At best; it’s wishful thinking. At worst it’s deliberately misleading.
It is not necessary to have pet registration to have an accurate assessment of a community’s dog and cat population, which is fortunate, because there is no city in the U.S. with verifiably even 40% licensing compliance. However, it is necessary to have recent community-specific survey data. If Austin is claiming an 85% s/n rate for cats based on the national average, this is plausible in view of Austin’s relative affluence and high education level, but also questionable in view that Austin is within the radius of states where s/n compliance is significantly below average. In addition, because Austin is climatically within a very favorable zone for outdoor cats, the fecundity of the unowned & at large cat population is most likely above average. In most communities bona fide feral cats are less than 10% of the total cat population, but in Austin this ratio may be quite a bit different. If Austin is claiming an 85% s/n rate for dogs, meanwhile, this would be implausible anywhere.