reaching the right people. I failed miserably to reach the people at the root of the problem. They put up roadblocks-they didn’t want to neuter Sparky, they wanted Fifi to experience having puppies, etc. Most failed to show to appts, refused help, and rural ACOs either are apathetic or understaffed.
Those are the hardest to reach. We try to keep working with them and hopefully they'll come around and decide to have their pets fixed. It's frustrating and sometimes seems like no matter what we do they'll never come around. We just keep trying.
I believe it's childrens education that will change this. There is a program in TN that has done over 25,000 presentations at schools in TN and now has some of their “classes” on YouTube. I don't have the link handy but can get it if you're interested.
Beautiful breakdown of what it actually takes to affect real change. An area to explore are the outrageous ‘low cost’ prices offered by humane societies - it’s almost like they really don’t want spay and neuter to succeed.
What municipalities don’t understand, although I am seeing more and more getting it, is the cost for prevention is way cheaper in the long run than reaction - bigger and bigger animal shelters and budgets will never fix the problem.
Thank you, and you are onto something real, though I would put the cause somewhere different than you did.
The prices often are too high for the family who needs them most. A partner clinic near us runs about $90 to $140 depending on species and sex, and all in with core vaccines it lands near $185. That is genuinely close to cost. Surgery means a licensed veterinarian, anesthesia, monitoring, sterile instruments, and a building to do it in. Nobody is getting rich on it.
And $185 is still impossible for a household that has never taken a pet to a vet in its life.
Both of those are true at once, and the space between them is the actual problem. It is a subsidy gap, not a motive. The organizations are charging close to what it costs them. Nobody is paying the difference.
Where this works, somebody covered that gap on purpose. Huntsville ran surgeries around $100 with a separate fund for families who could not manage even that, backed by city money year after year. That is the whole trick, and it is unglamorous enough that almost nobody copies it.
So I would not ask whether they want spay/neuter to succeed. I would ask who was supposed to pay the difference, and why that line is empty in nearly every county budget in the country.
We are on an 84sq mile island. We are definitely hitting those numbers islandwide, between all the rescues, shelter, and large multi-day s/n clinics… but it is not digging into the communities it is most needed.
We also have a lack of surgeons for long stretches, which makes it impossible to keep a good rhythm going year round.
An 84 square mile island is close to a closed system, which makes what you're describing better evidence than most places could produce. No strays drifting in from the next county, no neighboring shelter absorbing your overflow. If you're hitting the numbers islandwide and it still isn't moving where it matters, your geography has already ruled out most of the competing explanations. That's not a small thing.
What you're describing is the gap between volume and coverage. Islandwide dose is not the same as dose inside the two or three communities producing most of the litters. Pets for Life found about 88 percent of pets unsterilized in the underserved communities they worked, and price alone is not why a general clinic misses them. A clinic is a pull. You announce it and wait for people to come. The households that have never had any relationship with veterinary care are precisely the ones who don't answer a pull. Pets for Life moved North Charleston from 21 percent to 69 percent sterilized over five years by going door to door. Not by running a better clinic.
On surgeons, I don't have an answer for you and I'm fighting my own version of it right now. But it's worth naming what those gaps actually cost. They don't just reduce volume, they break duration, and duration is the variable that produces the halving. Five years at target is not the same thing as two years at target and three years limping.
Hello-what about the idea that we are not
reaching the right people. I failed miserably to reach the people at the root of the problem. They put up roadblocks-they didn’t want to neuter Sparky, they wanted Fifi to experience having puppies, etc. Most failed to show to appts, refused help, and rural ACOs either are apathetic or understaffed.
Those are the hardest to reach. We try to keep working with them and hopefully they'll come around and decide to have their pets fixed. It's frustrating and sometimes seems like no matter what we do they'll never come around. We just keep trying.
I believe it's childrens education that will change this. There is a program in TN that has done over 25,000 presentations at schools in TN and now has some of their “classes” on YouTube. I don't have the link handy but can get it if you're interested.
Beautiful breakdown of what it actually takes to affect real change. An area to explore are the outrageous ‘low cost’ prices offered by humane societies - it’s almost like they really don’t want spay and neuter to succeed.
What municipalities don’t understand, although I am seeing more and more getting it, is the cost for prevention is way cheaper in the long run than reaction - bigger and bigger animal shelters and budgets will never fix the problem.
Thank you, and you are onto something real, though I would put the cause somewhere different than you did.
The prices often are too high for the family who needs them most. A partner clinic near us runs about $90 to $140 depending on species and sex, and all in with core vaccines it lands near $185. That is genuinely close to cost. Surgery means a licensed veterinarian, anesthesia, monitoring, sterile instruments, and a building to do it in. Nobody is getting rich on it.
And $185 is still impossible for a household that has never taken a pet to a vet in its life.
Both of those are true at once, and the space between them is the actual problem. It is a subsidy gap, not a motive. The organizations are charging close to what it costs them. Nobody is paying the difference.
Where this works, somebody covered that gap on purpose. Huntsville ran surgeries around $100 with a separate fund for families who could not manage even that, backed by city money year after year. That is the whole trick, and it is unglamorous enough that almost nobody copies it.
So I would not ask whether they want spay/neuter to succeed. I would ask who was supposed to pay the difference, and why that line is empty in nearly every county budget in the country.
We are on an 84sq mile island. We are definitely hitting those numbers islandwide, between all the rescues, shelter, and large multi-day s/n clinics… but it is not digging into the communities it is most needed.
We also have a lack of surgeons for long stretches, which makes it impossible to keep a good rhythm going year round.
An 84 square mile island is close to a closed system, which makes what you're describing better evidence than most places could produce. No strays drifting in from the next county, no neighboring shelter absorbing your overflow. If you're hitting the numbers islandwide and it still isn't moving where it matters, your geography has already ruled out most of the competing explanations. That's not a small thing.
What you're describing is the gap between volume and coverage. Islandwide dose is not the same as dose inside the two or three communities producing most of the litters. Pets for Life found about 88 percent of pets unsterilized in the underserved communities they worked, and price alone is not why a general clinic misses them. A clinic is a pull. You announce it and wait for people to come. The households that have never had any relationship with veterinary care are precisely the ones who don't answer a pull. Pets for Life moved North Charleston from 21 percent to 69 percent sterilized over five years by going door to door. Not by running a better clinic.
On surgeons, I don't have an answer for you and I'm fighting my own version of it right now. But it's worth naming what those gaps actually cost. They don't just reduce volume, they break duration, and duration is the variable that produces the halving. Five years at target is not the same thing as two years at target and three years limping.