"Big Fix" Project Aims to Lower Animal Euthanasia Rates - Leader November 2011

Dallas has an animal problem. Residents abandon or relinquish more than 30,000 dogs and cats each year. In 2009, the city euthanized more than 26,000 of those animals, even though most were healthy and adoptable. It’s just not possible to find new homes for 50 to 60 animals each day.

“We are killing a lot of perfectly good and wonderful animals on a yearly basis – and that’s been going on for decades,” said Elaine Munch, president of the Metroplex Animal Coalition.

Now The Dallas Foundation is working with other funders and animal welfare groups to lower the city’s shocking euthanasia rates. Called “The Big Fix for Big D,” the effort aims to reduce the number of abandoned animals by sharply increasing the number that are sterilized. The three-year, $3 million project is set to launch by mid-2012. The goal is to raise the number of spay and neuter surgeries performed at nonprofit clinics from about 6,400 annually to 20,000 annually within two years.

“About two years ago, we received a generous bequest from the estate of Louis B. and Mary Ratliff to support animal welfare,” said Laura Smith, director of community philanthropy at The Dallas Foundation. “When we learned about Dallas’s terrible animal euthanasia rates, we knew it was an issue we should address. The Ratliff Fund gave us the means to make a difference.”

Around that same time, three animal welfare organizations started preliminary work on a project aimed at significantly increasing the number of animals sterilized in Dallas. The Kaufman County Animal Awareness Project (KCAAP) had received a grant from The Meadows Foundation to build a low-cost spay-neuter clinic in Crandall. That grant also led KCAAP to study the need for similar services in Dallas.

Bonnie Hill, KCAAP’s president, met with leaders of the Metroplex Animal Coalition (an alliance of 50 animal welfare groups) and the SPCA of Texas. The three organizations realized that their nonprofit spay-neuter clinics were operating at only 55 percent capacity. Working with an unpaid consultant, the service providers tried to determine why so many Dallas residents weren’t sterilizing their pets and create strategies to improve spay-neuter rates.

The agencies found three major reasons for the low rates: lack of money, lack of awareness and lack of access.

Lack of money is a perennial issue for many pet owners.

“Even though the prices for surgery at the SPCA are low, there were still huge numbers of people who couldn’t afford it,” Ms. Hill said.

Private veterinarians charge an average of $300 to spay and vaccinate a female dog, Ms. Munch said. The SPCA charges between $100 and $170 – but that’s still a significant investment for someone on a fixed income or who recently lost a job. Metroplex Animal Coalition provides vouchers for free surgeries, but they’re limited in number and targeted at residents with household incomes under $35,000. Clearly, the city needed more subsidized surgeries.

Lack of awareness ranks high, too, among the reasons for neglecting to spay or neuter. Some pet owners don’t believe that a dog kept in a fenced yard could ever get pregnant or impregnate another dog. Unfortunately, animals have way of escaping – or breaching –fences. Ms. Hill said some evidence shows that many animals in shelters are from an “oops” litter – the first litter a pet has before the owner has it fixed. These owners may be able to pay for their pet’s sterilization; they just haven’t found time to take the animal in for the surgery, she said.

Lack of access is a third major problem. Some pet owners have no ability to reach a low-cost clinic. KCAAP overcomes that issue by sending a van into neighborhoods that need spay-neuter services. Pet owners bring their pets to the van in the morning, and KCAAP drives the animals to the clinic for surgery. A few hours later, KCAAP returns the pets to their owners at the neighborhood delivery site.

“Everything was great,” said Bonnie Mathias, a member of the city of Dallas Animal Services Commission who recently had two dogs spayed via KCAAP’s van service. “I wanted to see the process before I started pushing it. I’m 100 percent behind it.”

While funders and animal welfare groups were still working out the details of the Big Fix plan, The Dallas Foundation decided to fund a test of the program. The Foundation awarded a grant from the Ratliff Fund to subsidize the cost of 2,500 spay and neuter surgeries. Pet owners would have to pay only $20 for each operation. The Dallas Foundation also covered the cost of a water bill insert in September to advertise the pilot project.

“It’s been hugely successful,” Ms. Hill said. “We’ve already done about 600 surgeries. By the end of November, all of our 1,100 subsidized surgeries will have been claimed.”

The animal welfare groups also have secured funding from the Summerlee Foundation to do a telephone survey about spay-neuter issues in Dallas. The results will help determine the best strategies for promoting sterilizations in different areas. And funders and providers are discussing how to pay for low-cost spay and neuter services after the initial project ends.

The hope is that a steep increase in sterilizations will mean fewer litters of unwanted puppies and kittens, and fewer kittens and puppies will mean fewer adult animals that will need surgery. And that ultimately should bring down the number of animals put to sleep at shelters.

“In five years, it’s realistic we could significantly reduce euthanasia rates and come close to having no killing of healthy animals,” Ms. Munch said. “We know how to do this. It’s a problem we can solve.”

For more information about The Big Fix for Big D project, please contact Laura Smith, director of community philanthropy, at lsmith@dallasfoundation.org.