By Jenn Geibel, Director of Clinic & Community Services
At Animal Friends, ending pet overpopulation is at the core of our mission. We work every day to facilitate as many spay and neuter appointments as our busy schedule allows. With the temporary closure of our Low-Cost Spay/Neuter Clinic during the COVID-19 outbreak, we knew that we would have a lot of catching up to do!
As expected, once we were able to safely re-open, our phone lines began to ring off the hook. New pets needing spay/neuter surgery, community cats emerging with the warmer weather and partner organizations in dire need of support. With our on-site surgical days being limited due to new safety procedures and protocols, we needed to think outside the cage to meet the growing demands of our community.
While Animal Friends has had a mobile spay/neuter unit for several years, a number of costly repairs have prevented our Clinic & Community Services team from offering this service to more than just a handful of our previously established partners. A faulty generator required the team to plug in to a power source in order to perform surgery – which meant our partners needed to have the proper outlet!
As requests for appointments continued to flood in, we knew it was time to restore the mobile unit and take our spay and neuter services on the road. After scheduling a long overdue service appointment, a new generator was installed, several other small repairs were made and our Mobile Resource Center was on the road once again.
Each day that our MRC leaves our campus, we are able to impact our region by spaying and neutering up to 30 cats directly in the communities where they live. While the repairs weren’t cheap, the reward of preventing so many unwanted litters is priceless.
Can you help our Clinic & Community Services team continue to be there for the pets of our community? Simply put, your gift will save lives.