End Pet Overpopulation with Sterilization and Education

This week, I've been seeing a lot of e-mails and Facebook posts about animals that are within hours of being euthanized at area animal shelters. They've exhausted their time at the shelter, and if not adopted today, will be put down.

Everyone is urging someone to adopt this dog or cat, and while it's heartbreaking to think that some of these very adoptable animals will lose their lives, we unfortunately can't save them all.

This is the cold, hard reality of animal welfare activism. And the time people are spending on these individual animals is, in essence, a waste.

The cold truth behind any kind of philanthropy is that, while it's heart-warming to see the story of a hungry child being fed a meal, a homeless woman being given a shelter for the night or an animal at the end of its rope being adopted at the last minute, there will always be another hungry child, homeless woman or last-chance pooch waiting in line to take their place.

The Human Society of the United States (HSUS) estimates there are four million animals euthanized each year. That's one animal every eight seconds.

Philanthropists and activists must start looking at the root cause of the issue of pet overpopulation. Take animal welfare activists in the U.S.; for example, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). The ASPCA recently launched a competition for a $100,000 grant that will go to shelters that "save a minimum of 300 more cats, dogs, kittens and puppies from August through October 2010, compared with the same three-month period in 2009. Beyond that, the winner will be the shelter that saves the most additional animals from August through October 2010."

While I'm not saying these types of incentives shouldn't exist, the focus should be more on solving the problem of pet overpopulation in general. The only way pet overpopulation will cease -and thus the euthanasia of millions of dogs and cats each year-is with an emphasis on spay/neuter campaigns and lobbying of government officials for greater regulation of pet breeding and sales.

With puppy mills breeding (and subsequently abusing) countless dogs each year, even if shelters have record-breaking adoptions, there will still be thousands of animals that continue flooding shelters.

Organizations like the No More Homeless Pets Coalition are where funding should be focused. No More Homeless Pets aims to end the euthanasia of companion animals and feral (stray) cats through sterilization and education.

The organization operates activities like Operation Catnip, a high-volume, low-cost sterilization clinic capable of spaying/neutering hundreds of cats in just a few hours. These monthly spay-neuter clinics, operated by a team of nearly 100 volunteers comprised of veterinarians, veterinary students, veterinary technicians, and others, sterilize up to 250 cats in a few hours. All cats also receive rabies, feline leukemia and feline distemper vaccines. Operation Catnip permanently crops the left ear of all cats altered in the no-cost clinic. The cropped left ear identifies each cat as stray and sterile.

Activities such as these aim at reducing the overall population of unwanted or homeless pets, as opposed to simply finding homes for a small percentage of animals while thousands more adoptable pets are euthanized because there simply are not enough homes.

The other aspect of this two-pronged approach should be lobbying government officials for tighter regulations on pet breeding, as well as stricter penalties like fines and jail time for puppy mills and other reprehensible "businesses".

Without emphasis on these activities, adoption drives and similar animal shelter activities are as useless as plugging a hole in a sinking ship with a tiny piece of bubble gum.

Sources

Humane Society of the United States, HSUS Pet Overpopulation Estimates

Humane Society of the United States, Pet Overpopulation