Rescue group tackles pet overpopulation with February Big Fix spay-neuter clinic
- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
NICE, Calif. – A spay-neuter clinic held this weekend offered free or low-cost surgeries for more than 100 cats and dogs with a view to preventing the birth of more unwanted pets, which is part of a local rescue group’s plan for solving Lake County’s pet overpopulation problem.
Orphan Dog Rescue held its second “Big Fix” event at the Robinson Rancheria gym in Nice. The event ran from 8 p.m. Friday until Sunday night.
Orphan Dog Rescue, a 15-year-old rescue organization based in Lake County, has rescued and rehomed 3,000 animals, and counting.
However, the group also has a mission of tackling the pet overpopulation problem by stopping it before it can start – in this case, holding spay-neuter clinics.
If anyone would know the impossibility of stopping pet overpopulation simply by adoptions, its Orphan Dog Rescue Executive Director Karen Schaver, who has been personally involved with each of the animals her organization has rescued.
A teacher by day and an animal rescuer just about every other waking hour, she’s pulled animals from desperate situations – either homes where they can’t be cared for or even from shelters – and found them new homes through her group’s Web site and adoption events, many of them in the Bay Area.
Based on her personal experience, Schaver is firm in believing that Lake County’s pet overpopulation problem can’t be solved by adoption alone. She’s tried it for a decade and a half, and it hasn’t worked.
Her conclusion is borne out by statistics offered by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
The ASPCA reported that female cats can breed three times a year and have an average of 4 kittens per litter; in seven years, one unspayed female cat and her offspring can produce 420,000 kittens.
Dogs can breed twice a year and produce litters of up to 10 puppies each. As a result, the ASPCA said one unspayed female dog and her offspring can produce as many as 97,000 puppies.
That leads to other heartbreaking statistics, including ASPCA’s estimate that 6.5 million animals enter shelters across the United States each year. Of those, 3.2 million are adopted and 710,000 are returned to their owners.
That leaves 1.5 million companion animals that are euthanized annually across the country, according to the ASPCA’s numbers.
And those numbers don’t take into account feral animals that live on the margins and don’t have basic food or protection.
In Lake County, while pet euthanasia rates have mostly gone down over the past decade, they are still high. In the 2016-17 fiscal year, Lake County Animal Care and Control said it had a 27-percent euthanasia rate, most of them cats. That was up 2 percentage points from the previous fiscal year. It’s also important to note that those numbers don’t include the city of Clearlake, which has its own separate animal control program.
So Schaver’s answer is bringing no-cost/low-cost spay and neuter clinics to Lake County, like the one that took place this weekend.
“It’s a cool event for a lot of reasons,” said Diane Davis, one of Orphan Dog’s stalwart volunteers and an event organizer.
Orphan Dog had previously organized a spay-neuter clinic in 2017 in Clearlake, where about 120 animals had surgeries.
The group is aiming at spaying and neutering a total of 20,000 animals by 2020. “It’s a big goal,” said Davis, and one that they acknowledge is going to require a lot of work and a great deal of support from the community.
Schaver said 56 animals went through the spay-neuter clinic on Saturday and 52 on Sunday.
Both days were furiously busy, as volunteers – all told, about 36 between medical and Orphan Dog – worked on intake, filled out forms, helped with animals recovering from surgery, did cleanup, contacted owners to let them know when to pick up their pets and gave them post-operation instruction.
The total cost for the event was about $13,000, which Schaver said broke down to about $120 per animal.
Altogether, Orphan Dog received 286 applications for 399 animals. They were hoping to do 160 spay-neuter surgeries, but one volunteer veterinarian didn’t come, which caused them to need to scale back.
Schaver said 90 percent of the people whose pets were serviced in the free clinic have annual incomes of up to $10,000, with the income for the remaining 10 percent ranging up to $15,000.
The expertise that made the two-day clinic possible came with Dr. Tracy Huang, DVM, and a group of volunteers she formed.
Huang, a veterinarian based at the East Bay SPCA, said her main goal is to address pet overpopulation, as well as service areas like Lake County that do not have as much access to veterinarian care, and to help low-income and indigenous populations.
Joining Huang and the veterinarians operating both days were several students from UC Davis Veterinary School. They were able to get important clinical experience under the close supervision of the seasoned vets.
Several operating tables were set up at the opposite end of the gym from where intake took place. There, vets were at work with students, and volunteers did prep and cleanup.
The surgeries continued until Sunday night. Several students looked on as Huang performed one of the event’s final operations.
With a methodical and deft touch, Huang showed how to perform a procedure, moving the surgical tools with precise movements and explaining her techniques.
As it looks ahead to trying to meet its ambitious spay-neuter goal, Orphan Dog Rescue said scheduling future events will depend on the dedicated group made up of Huang and her fellow volunteers. They decide which weekends they can devote to the clinics and Orphan Dog schedules them.
Orphan Dog’s leadership said the group can’t do these kinds of events without volunteers and donations, and they said the community has heavily supported them both in terms of donations and volunteering.
Donations for future events and Orphan Dog’s ongoing operations can be made online at www.OrphanDog.org or by mail to Orphan Dog, P.O. Box 662, Lakeport, CA 95453. You can also follow the group on its Facebook page.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.