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Midlands needs new low-cost spay and neuter center

Animal (out of) Control

Midlands needs new low-cost spay and neuter center

By Corey Hutchins

“Too many animals are on the loose,” says Jane Brundage. And she should know. As the co-founder of Pets Inc., an animal rescue and adoption center in West Columbia, Brundage has seen firsthand the fallout from an exponential growth of domesticated animals in Richland and Lexington counties. People have— for real— been throwing dogs over her fence. In fact, just the other day a volunteer found a closed-top litter box taped shut and left baking in the yard with five dying kittens inside. In the middle of the night shadowy figures are known to sneak onto the grounds and tie old dogs to the porch rails or to drop off baskets of newborn puppies. No note, no nothing. But the message is clear: “We can’t take care of our animals and we don’t want them to die.”

City of Columbia Animal Services Superintendent Marli Drum says about 10,000 to 11,000 dogs and cats are killed every year in Richland County alone and pegs the statewide estimate at over 100,000.

But people leave their pets with Pets Inc. because they know the no-kill shelter isn’t going to inject their dog or cat with a shot of sodium pentobarbital, or, for that matter, grind the animal up collar tags and all into low-cost pet food as one Canadian company admitted to doing in the past.

“They can be assured that if they bring their animal here that we’re going to find a home for it,” Brundage says. “We’re not going to send it off to be euthanized.”

Problem: Pets Inc. is currently operating at maximum capacity.

What used to be a doublewide trailer with shoddy fencing and blankets to cover the cages is now a two-story, 10,000-square-foot modern adoption center and shelter. But they can still only afford to house about 150 animals tops. As a non-profit 501(c)(3) charity, Pets Inc. relies on public donations and grant funding, which brings in problem number two: the competitive grant funding they recently applied for (a little over $306,000) to build a low-cost spay and neuter center has been frozen. And without that, Brundage says, the animal problem in the Midlands is going to continue to experience an explosion in domestic animal population and dogs and cats are going to continue to die at the end of a needle.

“We have the land, we have a vet lined up to come and work for us, and we’ve got staff ready to start rolling on it,” she says of the spay and neuter clinic that’s goal would be to reduce the kill rate at county shelters by more than 60 percent, “but we just needed the additional funding to build the additional space and purchase the equipment.”

The phone in the front desk lobby of Pets Inc. doesn’t stop ringing and the center fields up to 30 calls a day from Richland and Lexington county residents who want to admit animals into their adoption program. Another dozen or so just show up at the door during business hours with a dog on a leash or an armload of kittens, the majority not spayed, not neutered.

“Obviously I can’t take in that many animals on a daily basis,” Brundage says and reiterates her point about how incredibly important it is to have your animal fixed. “That’s the answer to solve the problems we have in our community with all these animals running around. It’s a danger to the community, it’s a danger to the animals, and we end up having a lot of sick animals running around that are malnourished and [then] the aggression issues come out and it’s just not a good situation for the people or the animals in the community.”

When Animal Allies, a non-profit organization out of Spartanburg, created their own low-cost spay and neuter facility, organizer Betsy Boxer said shelter intake went down 10 percent during their first three years in operation. Humane Alliance out of Asheville, North Carolina– what Boxer calls the “Cadillac of spay-neuter clinics”– tossed a hand grenade into the statistics of shelter kill rates there in Buncomb County by decreasing pet kills up to 60 percent in the 13 years they’ve been open.

“That’s really the answer to reducing the number of animals that are running around here [in Columbia],” Brundage says about the success of Animal Allies. “If we can do something comparable to what [they] did… I mean that’s overwhelming. And then each year the kill rates are just going to go down and that’s what we’d love to see. By establishing a spay-neuter clinic in our area that’s what we’re hoping we can do here.”

Having pets fixed is “fast becoming the cornerstone of animal wellness management” says Josh Gowans of the Spay-Neuter clinic on Shop Road in Columbia. The clinic there has been open for about 14 years and Gowans says the average cost of having a dog or cat fixed is approximately $45.

If Pets Inc. can get the money they need to build their low-cost clinic, and the public understands the importance of fixing their pets (that includes rabbits, too) maybe Brundage won’t have to worry about where she’s going to house the next dog that gets tossed over her fence in the middle of the night, maybe the kill shelters won’t have to order their hypodermic needles and sodium pentobarbital in bulk.

In the meantime Brindage knows how everyone can help: “We as a community have to take responsibility and make sure that we’re getting our animals spayed and neutered so they’re not out there making babies all over the place.”

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Imported Comments (old site)   |2008-04-01 22:50:45 1. The Rage said, June 11th, 2007 at 11:47 AM I gladly support the efforts that Ms Brundage and Pet’s Inc is doing HOWEVER, the message has been preached for over 25 years now to a mostly apathetic and often HOSTILE audience, especially the later when it comes to local governments and tax-payer supported programs. Cooperation between private and government-tax supported shelters has been short-lived at best, and in most cases, outright contemptous of the private-no-kill movement. The Columbia City Pound’s director has in fact, referred to the private sector “No Kill Movement” as “Bunny Huggers” in an article published in the other so-called “free press” local paper a couple years ago.Ofcourse, the pound considers anyone other than their Quasi-Tax and Water Bill funded “Animal Mission” division headed up by Sonny Sonefeld, the only “authorizerd adoption agency” with all others needless dividers of the funding pie. Their spay-neuter clinic is tied to licensing (Tax on Animal ownership) which discourages many pet owners from using the inadequate city paid veternarian. Eliminate the licensing requirements and see the numbers rise. West Columbia and Cayce have enacted pet limitation laws directly aimed at foster homes (anyone one over the government allowed limit is charged with hoarding). Stray and Ferral cat spay-neuter-RETURN programs and their dedicated caregivers are now being prosecuted because of a fringe group ofcat haters (Hello Center Street West Columbia, you KNOW who you are!) for even the most minimal of HUMANE intervention.Even feeding a stray cat can net you a 1000 dollar fine. National organizations like Alley Cat Allies have mailed out tons of literature and attempted on numerous occasions to work with West Columbia, only to be told to butt-out leading to even more draconian retaliation against responsible care-givers. Pet’s Inc itself has over its history has been harrassed with inspections, citations, and general contempt by the City of Cayce and West Columbia when the twin cities own decrepid shelter is nothing more than a killing zone for unwanted pets (Animals turned in are euthanized immeadiately, not even evaluated for adoption. The dog catcher then euthanizes (not a vet or even a vet tech) any animal HE/SHE deems ferral (could be just friightened) sometimes in the truck itself. Why doesn’t Columbia/West Columbia/Lexington already have a TRUE low-cost mass spay-neuter clinic?. Simply, apathy from a superficial populace and hostility from government animal kill agencies. Spay-Neuter is actually cheaper than Capture-Kill which in the dog catcher world, threatens their job security. Until enough of those who care for animals adopt the “Alices Resturant” philosophy of creating a movement forcing government cooperation, the status-quo will only increase. The dump truck load of animals killed every Monday at Columbia’s shelter will still be sent to the furnaces. AND in the long run, we’ll have even MORE unwanted pets Columbia could’ve had all this 30 years ago, if 1)The local pounds had had different leadership willing to embrace programs like Charlotte’s “Compassionate Animal Management” 2)The populace of the Midlands cared about something other than Gamecock sports. Until enough people demand total openess from the local government run pounds leading to cooperation and oversight by the private sector, animals will continue to breed and suffer in the Midlands. It’s all about “Alice’s Resturant” people. 2. Corey said, June 11th, 2007 at 02:24 PM Whooooooa bro. Nice job. But what does Arlo Guthrie have to do with it? 3. Nancy said, June 11th, 2007 at 11:02 PM The Animal Protection League has run a no-kill shelter for twenty-five years. We have a rented shelter out in Hopkins that is difficult to get to and costs us a fortune to heat in the winter and cool in the summer. We are always at capacity, with over 60 cats and 60 dogs. We don’t seem to have the luck that other animal groups do when it comes to getting our organization in the news, but for a quarter of a century, we have quietly been doing the same things Jane describes in this article: we take in animals that no one else will save. We operate solely on the good will of donors to the tune of thousands of dollars every month. I applaud the recent work of the Humane Society/SPCA in collaboration with the Animal Mission. For people in Richland County, getting an animal spayed or neutered is free, thanks to the fund raising efforts of the Animal Mission. It’s a shame that it took volunteer and celebrity support to do something that should have long ago been accomplished with taxpayer dollars. You can tell a lot about a society by the way it treats its elderly, its children, and it’s animals. I’m glad to see that our elected officials are at least beginning to acknowledge their role in reversing the pet overpopulation problem–or at least in slowing it down. Animal groups in other parts of the country have been wildly successful in reducing or completely eliminating the overpopulation problem; we can do it, too. 4. Mary D said, June 26th, 2007 at 05:21 PM The central Midlands area HAS a low-cost, high quality spay/neuter clinic open to every individual citizen and all rescue groups. This clinic is owned and operated by the Humane SPCA. The HSPCA recently renovated its surgical suite to accomodate a second veterinarian so that even more pets can be spayed or neutered at the lowest cost possible. The Rage is wrong about at least one thing. The HSPCA clinic is NOT tied to licensing and does NOT use an “underpaid city veterinarian”. The HSPCA is located adjacent to the City Shelter at 121 Humane Lane but is not operated by the City of Columbia or the Animal Mission and does not receive any governmental funding. The clinic is a mostly barely-break-even operation supplemented by charitable donations to the HSPCA. This clinic, like many private veterinarians, does accept the vouchers generously offered by the Animal Mission for free spay/neuter surgeries for pets owned by Richland County residents. With the addition of a second vet at the HSPCA clinic, everyone in the Midlands has access to high quality, low-cost spay/neuter services for their cats and dogs. Please take advantage of this wonderful resource and help end the tragedy of pet over-population and euthanasia. Call the HSPCA at 783-1267 or visit the web site at www.humanesocietysc. org to schedule a surgery for your cat or dog. Reply | Quote 0   0

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