SAN JUAN COUNTY — The rising cost of spay and neuter operations is forcing some animal owners to look for alternate solutions.
Some keep their unaltered pets indoors; others dump unwanted litters on the doorsteps of animal shelters or rescue leagues, said Sharon O'Neill, an independent animal rescuer. At any given time, O'Neill has eight stray animals living at her home in Crouch Mesa.
"People drop animals on my doorstep," she said. "They throw them at my house from moving cars."
O'Neill, 55, shelters cats and dogs while she searches for adoptive families. During the 40 years she's rescued animals, she's also taken ferrets, geese, iguanas and tarantulas, but cats and dogs pose the biggest concern, she said.
Without sterilization, dogs and cats can reproduce exponentially — for every person born, 15 dogs and 45 cats are born, according to statistics provided by the Humane Society. One cat and her kittens will breed 400,000 cats in seven years; one
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dog and her puppies will breed 70,000 dogs.
Pet owners and animal rescue leagues claim the rising population comes partly from the increasing cost of spay and neuter operations. Local costs range from $50 to $120 for male cats and from $100 to $140 for female cats.
The cost for the same operations for dogs is calculated by weight. It ranges from $79 for a male weighing less than 24 pounds to $260 for a female heavier than 100 pounds.
"They (operations) are so expensive that someone on a fixed income can't afford it," O'Neill said. "Many of the veterinarians also want the pets to have their shots before the operation, then they look at the health of the pet. When you're done, you've got a bill for $1,200."
O'Neill is disabled and lives on a budget of $800 per month. She can't afford to have her 150-pound timber wolf spayed, so she isolates the animal whenever it's in heat.
The timber wolf already produced a litter of nine puppies, which, because of the species, were almost impossible to place in adopted homes, O'Neill said.
"Every six to eight weeks, when the male dogs start chasing the female dogs, I separate them," she said. "If I don't, I'll have nine more puppies."
O'Neill only takes animals so abused or neglected they will die without help. She's one of several independent rescuers in the county, and most are paying out of pocket for spay or neuter operations.
Clinics see own increases
Veterinarian clinics also are taking a hit, said Amy Dellis, registered veterinary technician at Animal Haven in Farmington. Prices of spay and neuter operations have risen over the last decade, but profits aren't keeping up with the price of supplies, she said.
The cost of spay and neuter operations at Animal Haven has increased by about $15 since 2000, Dellis said. By contrast, the price of anesthesia has more than doubled from $25.73 per bottle to more than $60.
Operations at Animal Haven range from $74 for a male cat to $170 for a female dog heavier than 61 pounds. It's a steep price to pay for a five-minute operation, Dellis said, but the cost includes anesthesia, oxygen and suture materials.
"The price of our supplies has skyrocketed," she said. "Where we take the hit is in the amount of income generated by the doctor's time. The cost has gone up, but the profit has decreased."
The San Juan Animal League offers two options for low- or no-cost operations, said Susan Neale, director of the spay/neuter program. Low-income pet owners can apply for a voucher funded by a private grant, or reimbursement of the cost of the operation paid by local donations.
The voucher program is available only to dogs, Neale said. The animal league applied for a PetSmart grant to pay for cat operations, but was turned down because the county lacks a low-cost spay and neuter clinic.
The closest thing to a low-cost clinic is Baker's Bridge, a Durango-based veterinarian office that does sterilization operations on male and female cats for $55, Neale said, but the drive is too far for many San Juan County animal owners.
"PetSmart liked our program, but they wanted their dollars to go further," Neale said.
Even with a grant to subsidize cat operations, the money wouldn't cover medical needs of feral animals, Neale said. The spay/neuter program works on a $12,000 annual budget and restricts its programs to domestic animals. It also limits vouchers or rebates to three animals per household per year.
"We're over budget now," Neale said. "We would do feral cats if we could, but if we took those on, people feeding feral cats would use up all of our money."
No time to ignore issue
Ignoring the feral animal problem is not the solution, said Gina Rendon, an elderly woman who feeds as many as 75 feral cats.
"The reason I feed them is so they stay out of the road," she said. "If you feed a pet, they go to sleep rather than wandering into the road and making that look bad and possibly costing human life."
Rendon adopted six stray cats and four stray dogs, and she had each one sterilized, but she doesn't have the money to do the same for all the stray animals that frequent her acre of land in Kirtland.
"A lot of senior citizens take care of stray animals," she said. "We have a habit of taking care of something, but $75 for a spay or neuter operation can really hurt if we're on Social Security."
Neglecting the operations isn't the answer, either, Animal Haven's Dellis said. Spay and neuter operations lessen medical problems and lead to better quality of life, she said.
"We promote spay and neuter because it's good medicine," she said. "The premise that we have is that having an animal is a privilege, and if you're not able to meet the needs, you should not have an animal."
The county needs a low-cost spay and neuter clinic, said Kathleen Maestas, founder of El Dorado No-Kill Animal Sanctuary. Before municipalities enforce a mandatory sterilization law, there must be a way to afford the operations, she said.
"If there was some affordable way to do this, we wouldn't have this problem," she said.
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