In the US, approximately 6-8 million homeless animals end up in animal shelters every year. Barely half of those are adopted and, tragically, the rest—nearly 3 million healthy, adoptable cats and dogs— are euthanized.

These upsetting statistics can be summed up with one simple word: overpopulation. A single female dog can produce 200 puppies in ten years. A female cat and her offspring can produce up to 370,000 unwanted kittens. Most of these animals aren’t someone’s pets—they are too often suffering, hungry and unloved. It could all be avoided with a routine sterilization procedure.

February 28, 2017 is the twenty-third annual World Spay Day. The Oconee Regional Humane Society (ORHS), along with thousands of other organizations nationwide, will be using this time to promote and support spay and neuter programs, and to educate about why spaying and neutering pets is so incredibly important. Aside from being a 100 percent effective method of population control, neutering benefits the animals’ health as well. Spayed and neutered pets have less risk to certain cancers, less desire to roam and mark their territory, as well as reduced levels of dominance and aggression.

Our SPAYghetti Dinner comes only once a year, but ORHS is committed to work every day to help spay and neuter as many animals as possible. Several community programs are in place, including low income spay and neuter programs, mobile clinics, and feline trap, neuter, release (TNR). In the last five years, ORHS has treated 2,243 animals through our community spay and neuter program. We also hosted 16 mobile clinics to help pet owners spay or neuter 869 animals. That’s a five-year total of over 3,000 cats and dogs that didn’t have another litter, reducing the potential offspring by thousands in both Putnam and Greene counties.

There are many ways to join the fight against overpopulation from volunteering to simply spreading the word.  Any help is sincerely appreciated. We do our best to apply for multiple grants in order to fund these programs, however, even when we are awarded grants, the money is a drop in the bucket. Most of our funding still comes from private donations.

The OHRS annual SPAYghetti Dinner will be held at Da Corrado’s on Monday, February 20, at 6 p.m. in honor of World Spay Day.  Only 100 tickets will be available, with sales beginning February 1 at the ORHS Adoption Center 1020 Park Ave Ste 101, Greensboro.  An Italian buffet will be served with a cash bar.  Tickets are only $35 each.  All proceeds will benefit ORHS’ programs to spay and neuter community cats and dogs.  Sponsorships are available for this event by contacting Stephanie Coleman at 404.281.3579.

 

For more information on our programs or to make a donation, please call 706-454-1508, or visit our website at www.orhspets.org.