Each year, a nonprofit called RezDawg Rescue – with the help of other organizations – neuters and spays roughly 2,500 cats and dogs at a fraction of the cost in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.
A pop-up clinic was held Wednesday through Saturday at the Ute Mountain Recreation Center in Towaoc. There, it treated about 260 dogs at no charge to Ute Mountain and Towaoc residents.
“Some animals have one chance only to be here,” Dr. Emily Hays said in-between incisions. “It’s a chance to make the population better so they don’t get preventable diseases.”
Hays said that at a previous clinic in Towaoc, most pets came in with some degree of a tick problem. That’s because animals in the area spend much of their lives outside, and ticks are a reality in the region.
In addition to fixing the animals, the pop-up offered preventive care like vaccines, flea and tick preventatives, as well as microchips – really anything and everything to keep pets healthy, said Angela Cerci, who founded RezDawg Rescue back in 2011.
Pet food also falls under that initiative.
Cerci said that since the COVID-19 pandemic, costs to feed human family members alone have increased; with so many mouths to feed, sometimes it’s hard to afford having pets.
And so offering this kind of holistic help not only keeps pets healthy, it keeps them out of shelters as well.
Nationally, there’s been a major slowdown in adopting pets, Cerci said.
An estimated 6.3 million animals enter United States shelters each year, and only 4.1 million are adopted out, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
“Spaying and neutering makes the biggest difference the fastest. So do basic services,” said Lisa Petri, the president of the Colorado Animal Welfare League, one of the organizations that help put together the pop-up clinic.
Petri said she “runs a tight ship” to keep costs down, a trait she jokingly attributed to having immigrant parents. Jokes aside, they do the work for less than $100 per animal.
“That’s pennies compared to waiting until there’s a problem,” Petri said.
The dogs were dropped off during the four days the clinic ran – or the dogs wandered in themselves.
The wanderers are called community dogs, Cerci said.
Essentially, they’re just as they sound: dogs that don’t necessarily belong to anyone. Or, perhaps, they belong to everyone, as residents pitch in to care for them.
At any rate, they’re fixed and cared for like any pet at the clinic.
Cerci said that when the first Towaoc pop-up clinic was held in October 2023, there was a large volume of pets needing service. In effect, there was a lot to “catch up” on.
This was the third such clinic held, with the hope that the coming clinics more like checkups.
There are some volunteers that help make this possible, but the veterinarians are paid, so funding is always tricky.
Cerci said a 9News fundraiser at the start of this year helped raise enough money for a clinic in April 2024 and the one this fall. The Animal Assistance Foundation helped last year with a $10,000 donation.
