Christ Yoder
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Three Central Coast nonprofits are coming together this weekend to try to tackle pet overpopulation and improve animal welfare in the county.
They will transform the Nipomo Cat and Dog Hospital and its parking lot into the site of a clinic offering neutering and neutering services, pet vaccinations and more.
the “Snip & Chip SLO” The event, taking place this Sunday in Nipomo, will bring together three Central Coast nonprofits: Animal Shelter Adoptions Partners (ASAP), Animals in Need Fund and CARE4Paws of Santa Barbara County.
Terry Parry is the co-founder of ASAP.
“The professionals, the veterinarians, are telling us that they’re going to be able to neuter about 75 animals that Sunday,” Parry said.
ASAP has been around since 2001, promoting neutering and neutering to reduce euthanasia of adoptable animals at the SLO County Animal Shelter.
“We spend a lot of time and money working within this shelter to increase adoptability [of the animals]. And at a certain point, adoption is no longer enough. There are too many animals, so we want to work outside the shelter so that the animals are not even born, so that the supply side ends. We have enough animals that will be available for adoption – we don’t need homeless animals,” Perry said.
With this goal in mind, ASAP is co-hosting the event, where residents can have their pets spayed or neutered for free or at low cost. But Parry said there will also be services to improve pet health and welfare in other ways.
“We will be microchipping any members of the community who wish to come in and have their pet microchipped, and it will be for a dollar. We are also going to have the animals vaccinated – rabies, cat vaccines, I think there are four vaccines we are going to do that day, including rabies. And we’ll also have animal welfare checks that day,” Perry said.
Ellen Perryess with ASAP said holding these types of events has a tangible impact on the health of pets and strays in the county. She cited ASAP’s work over the past two decades as evidence.
“Now we are at the point, because of the sterilization and sterilization, because of the microchipping, we are now almost on par with some non-profit facilities in terms of non-killing. There is a percentage that is reduced, but it is largely lower than most county shelters, and that is due to community involvement as well as the efforts of the animal shelter and organizations nonprofits like ASAP trying to work to bring those numbers down,” Perryess said.
Perryess said the fact that the clinic’s neutering and neutering services are mostly free is intended to help low-income people in SLO County who might not otherwise be able to afford these services.
“Just because you don’t have a lot of money doesn’t mean you’re not a good pet owner,” Perryess said.
Between Sunday’s clinics and another on March 20, the three nonprofits hope to sterilize at least 150 animals inside the pet hospital and CARE4Paws’ two mobile clinics.
According to Parry, volunteers are key to making it work.
“To do something like this, we need a lot of volunteers. You can sign up and either help us with the emails and phone calls about appointments and the like, or be there on the day of the event. event, to be able to manage the animals and the people in that parking lot – registering, registering, things like that. Cleaning the cages, taking things apart at the end of the day, and we’re going to provide training on all of those things so that people feel able to touch the ground and [running] with that,” Parry said.
Volunteers can register for either clinic by emailing [email protected]. The organization says each event costs around $3-4,000 to organize, so they’re also accepting donations at sloasap.org/snip.
“Instead of expanding your prisons, let’s eliminate the inmates first. So we don’t have to add to our prisons, do we? And those shelters, as good as we can make them, are still not homes. And we all want these beautiful animals in homes,” Parry said.
