Wednesday, June 15, 2005
The East Bay Pit Fix
We spay and neuter pit bulls and pit bull mixes. For free, and for anyone, as long as they live in either Alameda or Contra Costa County.We began this program over a year ago, to help address what we saw was a growing problem in the community: the public shelters with whom we work on a daily basis were killing virtually no dogs for lack of space, except for pit bulls. They were, and are, over-represented in the community and in the shelter euthanasia logs.
We learned back when we launched Goal 2007 that wringing our hands about the state of animal welfare was not enough: we had to keep the animals from reproducing in order to keep them from dying. We could never adopt out enough to make a difference, not compared to the impact of preventing their birth in the first place.
65,000 spay and neuter surgeries later, we are getting somewhere.*
This past Spring, the East Bay SPCA organized the March 26th "Pit Fix Day" across the Bay Area, in part to encourage other humane organizations to step up and pitch in. I watched the news tonight; another Bay Area shelter has begun to offer free spay and neuter surgery for pit bulls.
It's very rewarding to see this come to pass!
*That's the number of surgeries we've done at the Oakland SPCA Spay and Neuter Surgery Center since we opened that facility in 1998.
