Hi, and welcome to the Animal Welfare Junction. This is your host, Dr. G, and our music is written and produced by Mike Sullivan. Today, I have a special guest from Spay First, founder Ruth Steinberger. Welcome, Ruth, and welcome to the Junction.

Hi, well, thank you very much. It's wonderful to be here.

So for everybody that's listening, we're going to be talking about pet overpopulation, the importance of spay neuter, and a little bit about the no kill movement. So first, how about we start with introducing you to our listeners and letting them know where you started from and what brought you to where you are today.

Thank you. Gosh. My passion has been spay neuter for many, many years, and I was fortunate to work under the Mentoring of Carol Hogue in Virginia, and this was in the 1990s, even back to the 1980s. And we're in the Appalachian region, and she made it clear very quickly that we could never adopt our way out of the problem, but we can keep animals in their homes, especially the female animals in rural areas that become so at risk by helping families get pets fixed. And it just didn't take a whole lot for light to go on, and I moved to Oklahoma to, uh, work on the development of spay neuter programs in areas, which was most of the state, that had no programs, no programs at all. We're a very low income state overall, and, um, so the programs were very much needed here. I also at the time wrote, um, primarily about legislative redistricting, totally different story, for three different Native American newspapers, and that took me to reservations, it took me to communities that were very much in need. I moved from Virginia to Oklahoma to work on spay neuter programs, and from there, the pathways just opened up in, in front of me, and, working, especially, on tribal lands, which was a wonderful experience, and, a lot of need, um, a lot of resources that were needed were not there. Tribes were, absolutely reaching out in the early 2000s to start programs, and so I worked, uh, with Dr. Jeff, who's been a guest on your program, to open programs that had a meaningful impact. And this is not just visiting once in a while, but this would, these were programs that were based on an assessment of the numbers, working closely with tribal health administrations, visiting often enough to get multiple services throughout the year. And at the same time, you realize that the resources to do this in all the places it was needed, would be very, very hard to ever come up with. It became clear that there was a need for an organizations, uh, that focus solely on animals that live among people in chronic poverty, remote poverty, rural poverty, poverty that's also impacted by racism and other social factors that make it very difficult for people to access services. In 2010, it became clear that a very nuanced organization was needed and Spay First was opened. And our goal was chronic poverty, rural areas, minority communities, and tribal lands, and it did not take long before we found ourselves, looking at what would it take to move forward with the research and development. Of a low cost product for, um, preventing litters that was, would be non surgical. So we spent a lot of time on calcium chloride in ethyl alcohol for male dogs, and we have partnered with federal agencies to continue that work with a target species being female, dogs. And, Looking at GonaCon, which has been shown to work in the past, Dr. Levy, um, published on the success for cats. So that is something that we are, that's underway for us. So what we have seen is that when you reduce the number of animals through spay neuter, you empower people to care. What we saw at one tribe, which was kicked off in 2003 by Dr. Jeff, which was the Rosebud Sioux tribe, um, they requested services that were larger than what they had. And, um, they had a team that was visiting, but they knew they needed a lot more. And what we found was that after just a couple of years of working closely with the health administration and making sure there was transport to get the animals in to base the level of Um, service on the numbers of households, not just going and saying, we're going to go and just kind of set up, but going, okay, we need an opening clinic that has the capacity for a 1000 animals. We need to then break this down to 3 times a year. And have the capacity for originally 400 animals per clinic. And what we saw within a couple of years were animals started coming in with names. Animals started coming in on leashes, and most importantly, they looked good. We went from a first clinic with 75% of dogs with mange over half being serious cases to fewer than 10%, and then fewer than 5%. So we called grocery stores, the few stores that sold large bags of dog food on the reservation. And what we learned was that as the number of dogs on the reservation declined, the sales of dog food went up. So the message is, when we empower people to care and to be their compassionate self, they do. They very often become that self. I, I feel people have to learn to be hardened. That people naturally do care about those animals that live around them. They don't like seeing them suffer. Um, they have to become hardened to it because they're, um, they have no power to change it. But when they do have the power to change it, people do. And they do care, and you see it in facts like that, like a store going, Oh yeah, we're selling quite a bit more dog food, but there's far less dogs. So, it's been very, um, very affirming to see what you can do with spay neuter. You know, there would be no way to have that same impact by saying, oh, let your animals have litters. We'll just come and get the litters for adoption. There's not the means to take them. Um, but when you let people take control of their own situation, empower them to take, take care of the animals. They, they, they do. That is how we saw the segue to non surgical as, as a lovely cat just made off with my jacket. We saw it as a way to, um, reach the poorest, reach those with the fewest resources, make it possible for, paraprofessionals to help in this, in this battle against overpopulation and unwanted litters. We have focused solely on products that can hit the ground for very low cost. Um, we don't view the non surgicals that are going to be, cost, uh, cost comparative with surgicals. Our goal with this is to have a vaccine. Um, we know for a lot of people globally who feed dogs, like many people in this country feed cats, um, they will be able to return annually. Um, a simple intramuscular injection is something that people who are now trained to give rabies vaccines, because that is such a priority in so many places, that they can be trained to give a second or they can simply give a second vaccine. And we can prevent, uh, thousands of litters. And to be clear, we feel that for a very long time, spay neuter is going to be the gold standard. It just is. But, uh, there is so much of the world that has nothing to rely on. Even large swaths of this country, you know, especially when it comes to community cats.

Similar to your story, when I started working in low cost spay neuter clinics, it was primarily because there were so many areas that had underserved communities, had either increased poverty, there were veterinary deserts, no veterinarians for 25, 50 and over miles. And I thought it was going to be. It was going to take a while to develop this business model and it did not take any time at all, right? Because if anything we've never been able to keep up with the demand from the get go. It's been our list of people that want us to go to to their locations It's much bigger than what we can do because it's just never ending and it is really nice to see how you were saying as far as the better care that the animals are receiving in those communities throughout the 17 years that we have been doing this, at the very beginning, we've always required rabies vaccine. And at the very beginning, we had people arguing with us that they did not want to spend the 7 to give a rabies vaccine. We don't want to spend the 10 for a rabies vaccine. We just want the spay or the neuter. And now, you know, fast forward to 17 years later. We have people coming in requesting core vaccinations, requesting that their dogs get more than just the rabies, requesting wellness care, prevention, you know, they're, they're more educated about the needs of the animals. They're more involved in their care, and we're seeing more of these animals that are being brought into their homes, even if they're indoor outdoor. At the beginning, I feel like everything was outdoor, and now we have a pretty good balance between indoor and indoor outdoor and then of course the community animals that that we get but yeah bringing bringing the service to the community and bringing that education is creating a sense of ownership to the people in the community and not having to worry about all these unwanted litters now now you have a a household that has The one dog, not the one dog having six puppies every six months. They just have the one dog to, to care about and to worry about.

Right. And it's a very different relationship to that animal. And frankly, that animal's relationship to the resources in the house becomes very different. You know, feeding one dog or two dogs versus feeding six or eight, the resources look very different. Um, and. So your, your desire to make it happen, I think for people who can't possibly feed the eight, um, so, oh, that, that's interesting. So you've seen a lot of changes through these years. Good. Yeah, we

have very good, very good changes. No, yeah, very good changes. And even the rescues demonstrating that they have had lower intakes in some of these areas as far as the number of strays, the number of large litters, because the, again, the community is able to take responsibility for it. We can't really fault people for not doing the right thing if they don't have the resources. If they don't have access to a veterinarian, we can't tell them, well, you're, you're a horrible owner because you're not spaying and neutering, you're not vaccinating. If they don't have it, they don't have it. I've never been to a reservation, so I would be very interested to go visit one someday and see what the difference in the communities are, but I imagine that it's something very similar that they're just having these problems with their animal populations because they just don't have the resources within the reservation to take care of them.

Um, very few tribes have the access. I mean, geography is, is an issue. Um, you know, there are a lot of social issues and I will tell you, the tribes that I've, I've really been fortunate to work with a lot of tribes and they've been wonderful hosts and places to work. The people putting these programs together, they totally got it. I mean, they, they totally, they know this is the way to make the community safer to, you know, it's, it's everything and you just really wish that there was a way to provide a lot more.

it's really difficult to find veterinarians that are trained in high volume sterilization and that want to put forth the time and the effort that it takes and that understand the needs of these communities, right? Because it's not the same. We can't go into these poor stricken communities and say this is the gold standard of care, you know, we want to do an x ray, We want to go do a ct and we want to do an mri. Those are those are not it It's what what can we do with what we have to offer and it's not settling, it's understanding what the resources are, what's available? And what reality is? I mean, the reality of, of these locations are a lot different than the realities that I see, for instance, here in central Ohio, it's going to be, it's going to be different. So finding veterinarians that are able to manage the needs of these communities is not an easy task, because it has to be the right fit. It cannot be to hire somebody just to hire someone like it's just gonna waste my time, waste their time and not help our patients. It's not really worth it.

How do you see this? Occurring. How, how many staff have you had in the past?

So I, at one point, so I have the mobile units and then for about 11 years, I also had a, a stationary clinic that was a 24 hour. Oh yeah, you said that. Walk in. Yeah, general practice and emergency practice. So I was managing both. At one point we had 10 doctors. This is, you know, like 15 years ago. And we had four doctors that that were on the trucks, and then the rest of the doctors were in the hospital. It worked out great. And as we had shifts because of people leaving for different reasons, and we would get new veterinarians, they were able to be trained into what we needed. And then little by little, we started seeing the, the ability to get individuals that can be trained to do this diminish. So a lot

of that was so a lot of

the, a lot of the mentality on just general practice and referral. Right. So I'm just gonna do So I hate to say the bare minimum because they're not doing the bare minimum, but they're not getting into very complex things. And then anything outside of that just gets referred. High volume sterilization is hard work. And when we're, when we're out there working, we're out there working, we, you know, one surgery to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next. Not everybody can deal with that. They're not trained to do so. And some are not willing to do so.

And there's a real physicality to it too.

No, absolutely. I mean, I'm, I'm very. thankful that my body has been able to hold on for this long. Um, but there are veterinarians that do this for a couple of years and their wrists are broken down, their elbows are broken down, their shoulders are broken down. And it's, knowing yourself and what you can do and adjusting to maintain the longevity of your body. You know, especially when we're young, we think that we're indestructible and we can do anything and we can pick anything up and we can do whatever. And then, little by little, our body starts to catch up. Right, right. So, but, I mean, again, I'm just really thankful that I've been able to do it for so long. Because yeah, I get tired and I get sore but not to the point of having to stop.

Right, right, good. Wow.

One of the issues with spay and neuter, clearly, is controlling pet overpopulation. And our shelters are just overcrowded with animals. And we're seeing this problem from a lot of different sites, but the reaction that people get into is more shelters, more space. And they're not really solving the problem, they're just trying to manage the problem. So, what is your perspective on that?

Well, more shelters, more space is a never ending equation. You know, more shelters, more space, we'll move to more shelters and even more space needed. Um, what we see in this part of the country is the shelters simply, basically saying there's no room at the inn, and giving absurd, um, timelines for intake, owner surrenders. Making phone systems very difficult, press one for this, press two for this, give intake appointments in the mornings when 11 in the morning when working people have a very hard time using those appointments, making people feel guilty. And so making public shelters inaccessible, rather than increasing the size of the shelter or concomitantly, um, what I see as an overall picture is, and I, and I would like to see more people who are expressing concern about what is happening to the animals in the new kennel. In this whole press to force numbers to change, rather than organically changing the situation, is looking at what, what drug, you know, purchasing records, city records or open records. What, what were the amount of drugs used? How many surgeries were done? What did drug logs look like? Because if we were taking in 10, 000 animals a year and some number were being euthanized, even if high, those that went back out the door were being fixed. And let's say it was only 5, 000. It was only half, But we're turning them away now and we're only Doing an intake of a few thousand, what is happening to those animals in between because now they are not getting fixed. And so, where I see this movement going is a pathologically short sighted way of dealing with a problem. It's like saying, well, if we close the domestic violence shelter on Saturday nights, we're going to be addressing domestic violence. If we turn the animals away at the door, then, you know, we're addressing what's been the role of a shelter, which is that they're receptacle for unwanted animals. So we close that door, but does it create fewer unwanted animals? Absolutely not. It creates uncounted animals. It creates animals that have now received no services. No vaccines, no spay, no meal.

I think that, the whole idea with increasing intake or increasing capacity above what they their resources. It's kind of, you know, the whole idea just thinking about it from a simple comparison. If we have an outbreak of a disease for people, we're not going to build more hospitals. We're going to look for a cure for the disease. So we have You know, we have over population is kind of a disease. It's something that is affecting. In my experience, some of the places that I traveled to that are overcapacity, the mental health problem of the staff is literally coming because of being overcapacity, being overworked, having to, you know, manage these animals, seeing them every day, seeing them deteriorate, so the animal's mental health is deteriorating, and the person's mental health is deteriorating. So, you know, clearly, we are concerned about the animals, but then there are people that are like, well, we don't care about the animals, we care about the people. Hey, guess what? Both problems get solved exactly the same way. We have to figure out how to control this, this intake and this extended stay of animals that are potentially unadoptable that are keeping adoptable animals and community animals from being able to utilize the shelter the way that is supposed to be done to begin with.

Well, and I think we've got, um, if you look at the number of dogs in the US. the closest, uh, per capita is Germany, and they have about half the per capita number of dogs. We have too many. We simply are stuffing dogs everywhere they can go. We're encouraging people to get a third dog, we're not solving the issue. And we cannot have shelters be for what shelters should be for, while we are continuing to produce numbers that are over the top. And there are so many signs that we're really in trouble. The sales of premium, and super premium dog food that's human grade food are skyrocketing. It's, it's the largest growth in sales However, also having skyrocketing need for pet food banks for people who cannot afford to feed their pets. So what it says is, again, this is, um, you know, extremes, but it's saying that there's a lot of animals in the middle area between those two. but while the super premium is growing, those who are very dire and probably some of those animals need sheltering because there's not enough food, um, and they're not getting enough. So we need to, I think, just look at how accessible, how people end up. I know our program in Durant, Oklahoma, it's, um, just north of the Texas line. We serve a lot of very low income communities. About 60 percent of the animals we ask where you got your pet. So was it a stray, owner giveaway, um, Walmart parking lot is one source. And a little bit over 60%, around 60 percent took their animal in as a stray. Um, they didn't make a choice to go get an animal that they couldn't afford to take care of. It was an act of compassion. It was not an act of irresponsibility. But what it says is they, they didn't necessarily choose to go get an animal or they didn't choose to. we've got to look at this overall picture and cut the numbers back dramatically. There are not enough resources.

Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up because, you know, there's so many people that say if you can't afford an animal, you shouldn't have it. But so many people have these animals because where are they gonna go? Like you said, are they just gonna leave it out on the street? They can't take it to the shelter, 'cause the shelter's closed, or it's not, it's not intaking. Uh, so that's the main reason why we do the mobile sterilization and wellness care is because these animals still need care. These people need resources. They don't have them. And it's very difficult for them to, you know, for whatever reason to drive or go somewhere that there are resources. So we just bring the resources to them to try to help them as much as we, as we can. Because even there are some of these places that do have some veterinarians, but the veterinarians don't have the capacity to keep up with the population. And the cost of care has gone significantly up. So there may be veterinarians in the area, but that doesn't mean that the people can afford to have the local veterinarian do the spay or neuter.

All right, right. I don't know what minimum wage looks like where you are, here it's still 7. 25. Yeah, here it's gone up. There's absolutely, much over $50, a lot of homes just can't do it. They cannot do it. If they're making minimum wage, even if there's two minimum wage earners in the house, um, it's not tenable.

Yeah, minimum wage here in Ohio is $10.10. Really? Now, some of the problems that we're seeing in the rural communities, though, is that it's not even a matter of is that sufficient or not, is that there are no jobs available in their areas. And then either they don't have jobs or they have to drive a significant distance to get to go to work, so then we get into, okay, so you can drive 50 miles to get a decent job or to get a job, but now you're going to have all of the gas and all the, you know, all the other expenses that go along with traveling. So it does make it difficult on people to again, just take care of themselves. And then on top of that, take care of the, of their family, including their four legged family. All right. Right. And one of the issues that I have, especially with the schools is, we talk about the professional capacity, so that's another push for increasing the number of graduates, but I don't think that just increasing the number of graduates is going to solve the problem because not everybody that graduates from vet school is going to want to go into community service, or it's going to want to go work in rural areas, right? Because, you know, with so many, so many corporate veterinary clinics it's like everybody's wanting to make as much as they can. And that leaves these rural communities with no options.

Nothing at all. And, and that again, especially for cats. It's why we feel there has to be some non surgical options, and there's certainly, there's a couple of tools in the box, but we need everything, because for cats, once they get ahead of a person, it's very difficult, and it's very easy for people to wind up with 20, 30, 40 cats. You know, in small communities, especially throughout the Midwest.

Going back to the, to the concept of no kill, I always tell people, I approve of the concept of no kill. I do not like the no kill movement because they're completely different things, right? To me, the concept of no kill is, is basically trying to maintain adoptable animals, healthy animals, and doing the best that we can to not euthanize for space and doing things in a responsible manner. But the no kill movement is just not very transparent. And it leads people to think that nothing is getting euthanized. And then they, they put this inflammatory language as far as saying it kill so that if you're not a no kill shelter, then you're a kill shelter. And there are so many amazing rescue organizations that may or may not have the numbers that the no kill movement requires, but they're getting penalized because they don't use the no kill wording. Yeah, and, and they don't use it because they don't believe in it. And they want to be transparent and so you see on social media, people that will say, oh, well, I won't support X, Y, C shelter because they're not no kill, but then they support other shelters that say they are no kill that may have exactly the same amount of euthanasias,, just because the community doesn't understand.

Or them turning them away. I mean, no, no kill can simply be slow kill.

Yeah, it's like, as, as you said, it would be like a domestic violence shelter shutting down and saying well, there's no domestic violence victims this week because we didn't take any in, it's, you know, there are no, no animals being euthanized because we didn't take any animals that needed euthanasia, but these animals are dying.

Exactly, yes, they are dying. Right, they're not being counted. And, you know, there's, coaching for shelters in what language to use. And so there's the no kill language and there's, um, claiming that you cannot keep your staff because they're euthanizing. And, you know, and so if you are in touch with several shelters in a state, and you can sort of hear the best friends weekly, um, they have a Zoom meeting. And you can hear different people say the exact same thing. Different parts of the state. They don't know each other. You know, um, it's, it's coaching in propaganda. And the animals are losing out.

One of the questions that I have is, we're talking about no kill 2025 and saying that we are reaching no kill 2025, which is really only a little bit over a year away. But yet euthanasia rates are increasing. So how can we be more no kill while the statistics show that euthanasia rates are actually higher than they have been?

Mm hmm. That's interesting, right? Yeah. Yeah.

So that that to me, I I'm I'm hoping for somebody to be able to explain that to me because it just doesn't make sense. I want to also talk about just kind of the effect of this mentality on shelters and services to the public because it's decreasing the services that are available to the community in general and to the animals that are going back to the community.

Well, and you know, shelter relinquishments historically came from the lower income parts of communities, the lower income zip codes. So that is who's lost the resource. Those were the ones who had the need for animal sheltering to be available because they were feeding this dog. Possibly there was an eviction. Possibly there was any number of problems. Um, a woman here in the town that I'm fairly close to, needed help getting her cats fixed. And so we helped her and at the time she said she had just become homeless in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the shelter, because it involved an eviction, the shelter said that's not an emergency. So, um, yeah. So she said to me, you know, this was someone who had some difficulties. and challenges. And she said to me, um, could you drive to Tulsa and look for my dog? I had to put her on the street because I had had a ride to this town, you know, near me and somebody who was putting her up. So instead of being able to take the dog, she was turned away. From the Tulsa shelter and so because eviction, you know, doesn't count as an emergency or didn't, um, so she left her dog on the street and she said very innocently, can you go to Tulsa and look for my dog? Well, nobody can do that, so, was that dog safe? No. Was she fed that night? Probably not. Are those folks at the shelter who turn her away, did they do something kind for an animal? No, they did not. And I think that's what we have to look at is, is, is euthanasia the worst thing that can happen in terms of starvation, in terms of being on the streets, in terms of having unwanted litters on the streets? You know, because now we have a really allowed an increase in numbers. And we are truly out of space, you know, and, and it's tragic to think of that if we now really do reopen shelters, there's going to be a lot more euthanasia than there were when this movement movement started to close the doors. Because there's just simply so many more animals.

The euthanasia is not the problem. And everybody's getting stuck on the euthanasia or on the kill part as being the problem. That's not the problem. That's a solution that some places have had to go to. Because, again, the disease, which is the overpopulation, is not being controlled. Right. So if we can, it's, it's just that simple. If we control the overpopulation issue and we decrease the intake, then we decrease the euthanasia. It's like a, it's a very simple equation that yes, we're having such a hard time understanding and the shelters, the, and I understand that there's such a huge lack of resources, but the shelters that are adopting animals out intact, just to move them are just creating their own problems, right? We spent so many years trying to get shelters to spay neuter before adoption. And then we got to a point where that was happening. And now we're going back to the dark ages and sending these animals out. And what we have seen. Is some of the groups that we work with that release animals under contract and they say, you know, we're going to schedule you out for for spay and neuter, you have to come back. And we have seen some of these animals that come back for getting spayed and these dogs are pregnant and. The shelter literally would have just been adding to their problem, and, you know, they didn't, they didn't mean no harm, the people that took the dog and that adopted the dog, they didn't necessarily mean for it to get pregnant, but that's why we spay and neuter, because that's where the term accidental litter comes from. We are just going so far backwards in not looking for ways to solve the problem. We're looking for ways to put a band aid in the problem and ignore it and say we're just gonna not be transparent, we're gonna pretend that it's not happening and we're not really going to address the underlying overpopulation problem.

Right, right, right, that's exactly, that's, that's exactly. It is very important for people to realize that let's let's go back to the statistic that says 75 percent of shelter animals are mixed breed 25 percent and I think that's very high are purebreds. I don't think it's even that much of a, you know, I, I think it's less than that is the purebreds. Um, so the release of shelter animals, that overwhelming number of animals intact for any reason, with no ability to chase down the animal. I want to figure out how I'm going to say, because I realized that a lot of rural shelters, their only option would be euthanize all. But, the fact is that a shelter that just releases intact on a promise and a handshake may in fact be the largest problem in their whole community. They are the problem household. Because there's no single household. Most communities have, you can have this number of dogs and this number of cats in a municipality, you can have up to three animals or whatever it is. The shelter that habitually releases intact is exceeding the number of litters that any of those individual households ever could have met. They're not, you know, producing 20 litters in a year where the shelter may be producing 20, maybe producing 50 by the intact release. The shelter itself may be the biggest problem if they are releasing intact. So it is so important because if the shelter jumps in to be part of the problem instead of part of the solution and and we're all one or the other at this point, then, that community has no way to get ahead of of the tragedy of animal overpopulation. No matter how well adoptions are going, the fact is that we are so overwhelmed by the numbers in this country. That, you know, saying our adoptions are going really well is kind of, it is, it is blind. It is totally a blind way to look at the future pathway. We currently, and I said this we currently have about double the number of animals, dogs and cats per capita, dogs in particular, of any developed nation. It is going to reach a saturation point. Most of the U. S. it's already at the saturation point. Most of the U. S. animals are not moving out of shelters and moving out of rescues. Rescues are taking a trickle of what they were taking of the number of animals that they were taking just a few years ago, and people can blame COVID. They can blame this. They can blame that. This was coming. This was coming. The shelters that are releasing intact, it's, and it is a hard problem because so many have no access to a local vet and the local vet for the rural shelters, they are diminishing. We do not have an increase in access. I would love personally to see veterinary schools do what Oklahoma State University has done. They have a shelter medicine program. It is very affordable to the rescues and shelters. You have to be a non profit. Your own veterinarian has to sign on. And they do a lot of animals for a lot of places that otherwise could not get their pets fixed before placement, and the students come out with, with more surgical experience than they would have otherwise had, I would love to see programs like that, even put in satellites, you know, in a few communities, let the veterinary students get the experience that they need and help with this problem for the shelters. Because, like I said, if the shelter is releasing intact, they're, they're a part of the problem. They're not part of the solution.

We have been increasing our mentorship program for students for that reason. Right? Because I think that it is important, as you mentioned, for them to get the skills. So even if they go into general practice, it doesn't matter where they go, they have skills to be able to do surgeries more efficiently. So they may be able to do more surgeries in their day to begin with. But yeah, what better way for these students to learn about high efficiency, high volume sterilization than going to these places that really, really need it, that have a surplus of animals that need the help, that need done. And then the shelters are getting a lower cost surgery care because these students are learning. So they're, they're going there. They're volunteering their time and they're helping reduce the problem because we do see two problems that we see with shelters that are sending out animals that are not sterilized are going to be the animals that the shelter didn't know that it was pregnant when they took it in and then they release it and the dog is already pregnant. And now it becomes this person's problem and this person may either do something about it or not. He may just say, Hey, here's these 10 puppies that this dog that you adopted me out had. And now here at the shelter now has 10 more dogs. Or we have had clinics that we have gone in to do animals that the owner is responsible and brings it back for the contract spay But it's been six seven eight months and the dog got pregnant at some point. So it's not you know, they're not doing it on purpose. It's an accidental litter, but the end result is the same is this animal was released intact And it resulted in a higher volume of animals than the shelter started, you know, they adopted one dog, and then they took back in eight more. So the numbers, the numbers are horrible.

I'm sure what you're doing is, is labor intensive. In terms of, you know, being on, on the road with them, but, you know, if the money were spent, it could be less labor intensive, and we could have veterinarians who do graduate with a lot more spays under their belt, that would benefit them, it would benefit the community hiring them, and it would certainly benefit the animals.

Yeah, it is. It is labor intensive and it, it is costly to us because veterinary students, especially at the very beginning, they're not very efficient, right? They take longer. They, they waste more supplies, but I look at it on the longterm. So we, for instance, right now we have three students that have been with us since since the beginning of the summer. And these, and these guys have improved incredibly. So, uh, each one of them can do between 20 and 30 surgeries in a day. And this is a combination of dogs and cats. Right. So yeah, they were, they, they took time and money to get them trained. But now I have three vet students that are able to produce at a high quality, high volume, efficient level. And they're going to graduate, and regardless of where they go, these are people that are efficient. Efficiency also improves safety of the patients, because they're under anesthesia less, they don't lose as much body temperature. So, and now they are productive, right? So they started costing me time and money, but now the amount of supervision is a lot less. I just have to be present there for if they have any issues, any concerns, any problems. But cost wise, they're not costing us any money because they are producing. They are producing as much as somebody that has graduated and has been doing this. So, so yeah, it is, it is worth it.

We need to educate the students. It's very conceivable that a student who says, yes, I want to come out and I want to, they could go to you, become proficient. And then they could take on a four county program, work four days a week, and make a doggone good living, you know, and enjoy a rural area, enjoy an area in which they can invest in, in a home and some land that is going to appreciate instead of, you know, killing themselves and then, you know, being three years into it and really being in a terrible quagmire. People could have their independence and have a great income. But we can't do that if we're not going to invest in some infrastructure and treat this as a public health issue. So, if we're reducing the numbers that are having local litters, and we're investing in making those animals transferable, either to a home or to a larger organization that takes some of them, you know, I mean, we can sit down and really look at a forward pathway that changes this entire picture.,

I have been working on a survey to try to figure out how much is the cost of sheltering for dogs and for cats. And the whole idea of it is, okay, how much does it take to intake this animal and vet it and house it and on average per animal versus if we were just doing spay and neuter, right? Because in theory, the shelter should be intaking any animal that needs a home. You're absolutely right. Absolutely. So, or any animal that has no home. So if they have to take every single animal, well, if we spay and neuter, Every animal that needs spay and neuter, what is the most cost effective way of doing it? And so far, I'm finding that it's a lot less expensive to spay and neuter than to house an animal at the shelter, right? Also, some of the problems that people surrender animals for are treatable problems that, that they just don't have the resources to take care of. So, in, in talking about shelter diversion, I, I like the idea of shelter diversion when it is a home that there's no intentional neglect, that it is a home that wants to keep this animal because, again, it may take, it may cost the shelter 350 dollars to house a dog. Well, the problem that that dog has may only take 100 to take care of. Right. And if we can help this person and say, okay, why are you surrendering your, your dog? Well, because it has this skin condition, I cannot take care of it. You know, it's got fleas, it's got skin infection. So, I can't take care of it. I don't want him to suffer, so I want to surrender it. Oh, okay. So you have a problem that just requires an exam and it requires flea prevention and it requires antibiotics and it requires educating you on how to control the problem in your house, right? That's not 350, right? It's less than that. So, let's get you to keep your pet. It's one less animal to find a home for. You're happy because you can keep your pet and then your pet has the care that it needs. Right. And then everybody wins and it's actually less expensive. It's more cost effective than trying to take an extra animal into the shelter. So, I don't know, the shelter diversion is being done, in my opinion, wrong, because it is more how to keep animals from coming to the shelter, period, without figuring out what's the best outcome for that animal, right? Uh, okay. Well, this person doesn't want this dog. This person doesn't care about this dog. This person is fed up with this dog. And then we're telling them, well, it's your responsibility. So you figure it out. What do you think is going to happen to that dog? It's going to end up in a really, really horrible situation because you have a person that is detached that, that doesn't care about this life. And then we're telling them, you figure it out.

Right. And it is absolutely going to end up in a horrible situation. You know, it's only, it's only pathway forward that may not be horrible is if it gets dumped and it has the luck of the draw, it gets picked up by somebody who likes it.

And we're trying to teach people responsibility. At the cost of animal health and safety

and safety and suffering terrible suffering and people are not learning to be responsible by being told you have no solution here and they turn to the only thing they know, which is dumping.

And then the other thing that we're seeing is an increase in the number of stray dogs. And we, we used to say, I mean, even to this day, if I see a stray dog out in the street, I think that it's either lost or somebody dumped it. So, now people are being told just leave it out there. Yeah, just leave it. So what are we doing? First, we are creating community dogs. Which, the concept of community dogs is not good. I grew up in Puerto Rico. There are stray dogs all over the place. It's not a good situation for those dogs.

It's not acceptable.

They're not, they're not fixed. So they're going to continue to reproduce. A pack of dogs is a completely different story than a colony of cats, right? A pack of dogs can potentially be dangerous. So it's we are again in the creating our own problem by telling people, figure it out. We are creating a problem, not just for the animal, but we are creating a really serious community problem that if it escalates. Then we are going to become, like, those videos that we see of countries with animals just roaming the streets and dog bites and rabies incidents

All of it. And, you know, the one thing that I'm seeing with, again, this quote no kill movement, no kill is slow kill. There's no such thing as no kill when we're turning them away from the shelters. Dogs do not find their way home. They may be within a mile of their home. Leaving it on the street does not facilitate getting it back to that home. It facilitates that lost dog becoming even more lost. And what we know is that if a dog does not get reclaimed or make its way home within 24 hours, there is very little chance that dog is making it home.

Yeah, I see it as if you're, if we're not doing something, okay, let's say that it is within a certain radius and it could potentially get back home. It also can get hit by a car on the way home. It can get attacked by other animals. It can get attacked by a human that it's trespassing into their yard, and it's going to, suffer from that. And the other thing is. We're, we, we encourage people to, microchip and shelters are microchipping, so that if your animal gets lost, it can come back. If your animal gets lost and nobody picks it up, how is it gonna get back to you?

My, yeah, they've completely, this, this logic has completely diminished the value of microchipping to nothing. If you don't take the animal in at the shelter, and the person doesn't have the wherewithal to pick the animal up and drive it somewhere, people don't have a scanner in their kitchen. You know, I mean, there's no value to microchipping if the dog is not going where it can be scanned. Zero. If you're not going to have that animal go to a point, place, and typically that's a shelter that's going to read the scan and track the dog down, then there is no value to the chip and tags go, you know, wherever they go, tags do fall off. And, um, you know, we have got to just get this down to that if we do not stop the overpopulation from happening, we are not going to humanely solve the issues, leave that dog on the street is not humane. We've got to give them the space. We've got to make sure they've had food and try to get them back to an owner, see if there was a problem, as you've described, many, many situations can be resolved, but at the bottom of it all, if they're, they are born 8 to 10 at a time in dogs, or seven to ten and they're adopted one at a time. And if we don't stop the flow, this problem of leaving animals on the street is going to continue to grow in in our region. We have more animals, way more than we've had in the past, and it's not due to COVID, it's due to the interruption in sheltering.

We have to work together to decrease just pet overpopulation because as we mentioned earlier, I mean, it's, it's a disease. So we have to cure the disease. And until we cure the disease, we're not going to get anywhere. We can't be at the end of it trying to deal with the problems that it causes. We need to be at the beginning of it. And take care of it at the beginning so that so that eliminates what we're seeing, you know, we don't want to euthanize animals at shelters. Great. Less intake, proper less intake results in not as many animals being euthanized. We have issues with shelters being overcrowded and not enough staff to take care of everybody. Again, less intake because there's not as many animals helps with that problem. It all comes down to, we have to, to do better at controlling pet overpopulation. If we don't work on that, if we don't put most of our efforts in that, the rest, it doesn't matter. Because we're just, I spoke with Dr. Blackwell, we're mopping the floor, but we're not turning off the tap. Right, exactly. It's continuing, and we're taking care of all the issues, but we are not fixing what actually created it.

And at this point, as we're closing the shelter doors, we're not even mopping the floor. We're just saying, oh, what a fascinating thing it is to have a soaking wet floor, and really we're normalizing it. We're going to let the dogs be on the street. We're going to normalize street dogs. We're going to normalize what is unconscionable, you know, and yeah, we're not even mopping the floor now, we're just saying let the tap run. It's good. It's all good. And it's not, it's not, you know, what you're doing is, is really changing what the capacity is going to look like for people needing veterinary services and facilitating the right things happening for animals. I mean, making sure that veterinarians are comfortable in, you know, some capacity of high volume, so that we can use and develop infrastructure.

Yeah, because the other problem that I see from the forensic sides, right? So from the animal cruelty and neglect side, I see posts where somebody has You know, done something horrible to an animal and people will say that's ridiculous. They should have given it away Okay. Let, they should have given an

I know, right?

Do, do we know that that person didn't try to give it away, right? Do we know that that person had the ability and the resources? I'm not condoning what the horrible, cruel stuff that this person has done. And as a forensic veterinarian, I'll do everything that I can to have justice for that animal. But did we cause that problem? Did we eliminate the resources right to do that? Right. Um. You have rescues, shelters, becoming hoarders and abusing and neglecting these animals because they have no food but we're telling them you can't euthanize and because then you're you're cruel and you have to intake but you have no resources so we're telling them you have to do this you have to do this you have to do this and then when they do it and they become hoarders then we're like I can't believe that this rescue abused all these animals they should be there to help them. Well, they started out wanting to help, but then we pushed them into this corner where they became a cruel place to be in. So, you know, everybody's so judgmental. Everybody is judgmental of everything that people want to do, but we are taking away the resources to do something about it. You know, like, Oh, well, you should not have 10 dogs. You cannot afford 10 dogs. You should not have 10 dogs. Okay, great. Where are they? What are they going to do with said 10 dogs? Where are they going to take them? What? I mean, there's nowhere, nothing for them to do about it. So then. Okay, so you're stuck with the 10 dogs because we're not giving you an out. We're not giving you an ability to get rid of them. And you are, and you're okay keeping the 10 dogs, but then we're gonna tell you that you're a horrible human being because you're not vaccinating and treating and doing all these things because you can't afford to have 10 dogs. Well, you should have spayed and neutered. You should have spayed your, your female. Great, but there is no resource to spay your female.

Oh, it's exactly, it's exactly what's happening.

It's ongoing. It's a circle that never ends. It's not a circle, it's, it's a ball, right? It's like every direction.

Exactly. It's exactly, it's a, it's an ugly ball that's, you know, um, and what you're saying, I mean, I'm sure you see the, the, um, some of the listservs. That are just lists of horrible things that have happened to cats. It's comes out monthly and, many of the animals that were victimized were turned away from shelters. There's, um, a listserv that comes out of PETA that details, you know, it's a monthly list of terrible things that have happened to cats, and many of them were turned away from shelters. They'll say they know the history. This cat was left because X, Y, and Z, and then the cat is found, and there's been terrible suffering. And, uh, you know, it, it, it is not okay to, to turn them away and then say we've achieved no kill, we've achieved strays. That's all that was achieved.

I only have the cats that I can take care of, so it would be very easy for me to say, well, I have control over what I have, so everybody else should have control over what they have, but not everybody has the resources that I have. And again, like we had said before, most of these animals are taken in as strays. They're not being purchased. It's not an irresponsible situation. So somebody's trying to do what's best and they're trying to help and then they have no resources And they end up in a bind, and instead of figuring out how can we help these people, we take this grandstanding and say, you're just irresponsible, and it's not my problem. Well, I got news for everybody. It's, it's all our problem. It's all our problems. It affects all of us. We, we all have, whether we are the so called responsible owner or not, We are responsible for everything that happens in our community. And at the very least, if we are not gonna help, if we cannot help directly, we can help by not being judgmental and by, you know, pointing a finger and saying what people are doing wrong. So the, the people that, the people that go on social media and somebody is saying moving to a new place, can't take my, my dog with me. I tried to find a place that accepted animals. I couldn't, have to go, you know, this is my, my dog. Um, and half of the comments are, you're ridiculous, I can't believe that. Like, you know, it's trash. And it's like, and that's the negative that I'm talking about. There is no, instead of saying, yeah there are, you just don't care, you're not looking hard enough. Instead of doing that, there's the saying, hey, I don't know if you have looked at these resources that are available. Maybe there is a way for you to be able to keep your pet. Maybe there is a way to find like a temporary foster home until you can get back on your feet, like a solution rather than just

Trashing somebody out.

Well, you're, you're a, you're a piece of dirt. You can't take care of it. So you're a piece of dirt. And, and I don't have any, any resources or any solutions for you. I'm just here to tell you that, that you're worthless.

And even, you know, you even see that when somebody is posting, a rescue is posting, needing some help, and you see 20 posts saying, oh, I wish I could help. This is so sad. It's like. Help or don't,

but you can help. You can share, you can let other people know, you can be a voice. So instead of just saying, Oh, I wish I can help, but I already have two dogs. Saying, I cannot take this pet, but I will share this with my groups. I will share this with my social media. You know, I will spread the word about the needs that you have. And in that way, I'm not helping directly, but I'm helping indirectly.

Right.

Like we have to, we have to learn, I guess, how to people because. Most people don't know how to people, right? Right. This has been a great conversation full of information, has created questions, which is great, because we need to find questions to continue on and to find the answers. So if somebody that's listening, wants to learn more about your organization and what you guys do, where can they go?

Well, we are at SpayFirst, all one word, spayfirst. org., And they can either email info @spayfirst.org or me, ruth@spayfirst.org. Most of our work is in the research in canine and feline contraception that will hit the ground very affordable and, you know, can be given like a regular vaccine stored at regular vaccine temperatures given by somebody who is approved to give a regular intramuscular injection. With that said, what is so important wherever you are, if you are a listener, support your local spay neuter program, support your animal sheltering at your local animal shelter. In doing the right thing, in taking in animals, in helping to get them spayed and neutered, figuring out how to develop local programs, supporting your local spay neuter program. It is so needed. Anywhere that people are listening to your podcast, they can help on the prevention end. And one spay is worth taking in five puppies, seven puppies, you know, 11. I mean, just the numbers are daunting on the aftermath end. We need an army of people working to prevent the tragedies and anyone listening to your podcast can, you know, can do it.

That's right. Well, thank you so much for spending this time and for sharing this information. And I'm looking forward to seeing this vaccine because I know that we will have great use for it in some of the rural communities that we travel to. And, you know, every little bit that we can do is more than doing nothing.

Well, you know, and that's exactly how we feel is just, you know, that we must have all of the tools in the box. Um, spay, neuter, what you're doing, surgeries, that's going to be the gold standard. That's going to be the gold standard for a long time. But if we can prevent, 1000 litters along the way, and prevent 1000 more next year, litters, you know, think about that, that what that word means in cats, it means three or four, you know, so, what we feel is that this can make such a difference that, it can help in areas where we cannot ramp up the numbers of spays quite enough. And if people want to help and donate to our effort to develop the contraceptive vaccine, they can certainly go online and donate at spayfirst. org.

Well, thank you very much for spending this time with us. And to everybody that's listening, thank you for listening and thank you for caring.

Will bark at you soon.