One of the local vet clinics has generously offered to spay 8 dogs free of charge for Toronto Animal Services' adoption program. Only a very few vet clinics around Toronto are willing to donate or signficantly discount their fees for the program. Adopters are vetted pretty well by TAS so that means that most new owners will be taking their dogs, shortly after the adoption paperwork is done, to a vet for their first check up and wellness tests. That's what? $200 - $300? And of course if there's anything wrong with the dog then that becomes $400 or $500 pretty quickly. I'm not complaining about those prices, after all, it's a business, but doesn't business run on you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours relationships. Any dog that leaves TAS with a new owner is basically a cash register for some vet somewhere and considering the hundreds of rescued dogs that go through TAS every year, you'd think throwing a few spay/neuters their way wouldn't be such a big deal.
Well in a few months, that won't be such a concern anymore. After a recent hefty corporate donation from the charitable wing of Petsmart, as well as much arm twisting of the self-interested OVMA, the GTA will get its first non-profit, high volume spay/neuter clinic, Spay Central Toronto, offering deeply discounted services. Sure a lot of their future clients may not have visited a vet in the first place due to expenses but I'd bet that a significant portion of pet owners will get their spays/neuters done at the clinic basically because they don't want to spend 5 to 6 times more at a regular vet's office. That's unfortunate for all those vets, and that's probably all the vets in the GTA, who now stand to lose a significant portion of their income.
Spay Central Toronto is still looking for donations to help kickstart their "Neuter Scooter" which will be a shuttle bus that will pick up pets from designated locations and drive them to Spay Central Toronto for spaying/neutering and then drop them off again at the same location after the operation. In many U.S. cities, the spaying and neutering is actually done on the bus but apparently that's illegal here. Still a pick-up/drop-off service is pretty good.
These three girls are getting their bits removed before being put up for adoption next week:
Sheila
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If vets offered discounted spays/neuters, maybe in the form of volunteering time at neighbourhood targeted spay/neuter clinics, it'll help encourage people on lower incomes to spay/neuter their dogs. Of course, for a lot of people, unless they believe in karma or heaven or Santa Claus, helping others is never a good enough reason to do anything really. Or is it? Maybe if vets had been a bit more charitable in the first place, they wouldn't now be facing this kind of competition from Spay Central Toronto.
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