Little Boy Blue (29 page)

And when the ASPCA is using it, the purpose is not just to perform sterilizations. It’s to take yet another step toward solving the problem of homeless dogs—by gathering what may be the first-ever reliable documentation about the financial and statistical difference that spay/neuter programs can make to shelters all across America.

In order to collect this data, the ASPCA’s mobile clinics work regularly with the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC Animals. New York City passed a law in 2000 requiring all dogs who enter shelters to be spayed or neutered before they go to homes. Two years later, the Mayor’s Alliance was founded in part to broaden the effort. It’s a coalition of more than one hundred fifty rescue groups and is the parent of the Maddie’s Spay/Neuter Project, which provides low-cost or free services in all five boroughs. While I would have to fork over several hundred dollars to get a dog like Blue neutered at my local veterinarian’s office in New Jersey, the Maddie’s Project offers the service with co-pays as low as twenty bucks in New York City—and for free if you are a dog owner who receives public assistance such as welfare, food stamps, or public housing.

As of December 2010, working in cooperation with the ASPCA, Humane Society of New York, The Toby Project
¹¹
, and New York City’s own Animal Care and Control shelters, the Maddie’s Project was helping to perform a little more than 52,000 sterilizations each year—and just as the Humane Alliance documented in North Carolina, the New York City operations were directly correlating to big-time changes inside the local shelters.

“In the year before we started our spay/neuter program, in 2002, they were killing 74 percent of shelter animals in New York City,” says Jane Hoffman, president of the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC Animals. “By the end of 2010, we had it down to 33 percent, and we expect it to go to 28 percent by the end of 2011. That’s because of a confluence of things, and spay/neuter is a huge part of it. That, plus marketing these great dogs to get them homes, plus educating people that they should adopt dogs instead of buying them.”

The ASPCA is also now rushing its mobile clinics to any New York City neighborhood where shelter intake numbers spike. The hope is to use sophisticated mapping software to determine precisely how many spay and neuter surgeries need to be performed in “hot spots” before the balance tips back.

“It’s never been proven how many spay/neuters need to be done and how long that pace has to last before you see a significant difference in the shelters,” Christian says. “The only previous study that was done was proved not so scientific. So we are gathering the data now, to back up what we already know from many years of anecdotal evidence.”

Once the ASPCA has the data compiled, it plans to make it available to counties and cities nationwide. A shelter like the one where Blue was found would be able to see—say, at the time the county’s annual budget is being allocated—what it is spending to kill dogs versus what would likely be achieved if the same number of taxpayer dollars went toward a local spay/neuter project.

“You have to change attitudes about this not just in the public, but also in the shelter system and even among veterinarians in a lot of places,” Hoffman told me. “You need somebody in charge of the shelter who sees himself as more than just the dogcatcher-in-charge. You need somebody who’s going to change the culture at that shelter, somebody who will look at the costs of killing dogs and disposing of their bodies, and then look at the similar cost of holding an adoption event to save them, and then look at the cost of spay/neuter in the big picture, and then check their own attitude. These places that have gas chambers—that, to me, should be embarrassing to any community that still has one. It is a stain and it is a shame. These gas chambers are barbaric. There are resources out there to help you change, if you actually want to change.”

Millions of dollars in resources, actually. A number of organizations make substantial financial grants to help shelters start spay/neuter programs. PetSmart Charities alone budgeted nearly $12 million in 2011 for spay/neuter initiatives.
¹²
The Petco Foundation provides similar financial grants to shelters and rescue groups, and works with Spay USA to provide lowcost sterilizations nationwide.
¹³
The ASPCA gives grants as well as business plans and training to shelters that want to improve spay/neuter services.

None of these organizations have a problem with rescue groups transporting dogs like Blue hundreds of miles into homes, but they do believe those groups also have a moral responsibility to assist with spay/neuter initiatives—so there will be fewer dogs needing transport overall.

“It can be true that, if you just work on the transports, then all you are doing is exploiting the problem,” Hoffman says. “Unless you are also involved in spay/neuter, you are not actually solving the problem. You never turn off the faucet that is flooding the shelters in the first place.”

When I adopted Blue, I was actually pleased to see that he had already been neutered. By the time I met him, the surgery was long since a memory and I only had to worry about routine shots going forward. To me, it’s just plain crazy to believe that spaying or neutering a dog will do anything but prevent him from procreating. I have seen no evidence, with any dogs I’ve known, that spaying and neutering changes a dog’s personality or causes him health problems beyond minor post-operative discomfort.
¹⁴
I had my Beagle mix Floyd neutered, and he lived to be nearly sixteen. I got Stella spayed right after I adopted her, and she was just as hyper after the surgery as she was before it. If Blue was any different before he got neutered, well, then I need to go thank the veterinarian for yet another job well done. Blue’s personality is absolutely dynamite. He could not be a better dog.

The same is true of my foster dogs Izzy and Summer. The people who eventually adopted them appreciated the fact that they had already been sterilized. The adopters also appreciated how beautiful they were, how friendly they were, and how much love they wanted to share—all of which left me with tears in my eyes as I dropped both of them off at their new homes.

11
The Toby Project provides free and low-cost spay/neuter services throughout New York City. A graphic on its website,
www.tobyproject.org
, shows how a single, unaltered female dog and her puppies, if also left unaltered, can give birth to 67,000 additional dogs in just six years.

12
According to the PetSmart Charities 2010 annual report, the spay/neuter funding was part of nearly $40 million the organization planned to give in 2011 for projects including adoption and transport.

13
Visit
www.Petco.com/foundation
for a state-by-state list of places where you can receive low-cost spay/neuter surgeries.

14
And researchers are now working to eliminate that, too, along with the cost and training required to perform spay and neuter surgeries in the first place. As of August 2011, the Michelson Prize and Grants program had given more than $6 million in funding to applicants with ideas for nonsurgical spaying and neutering techniques. The first researcher to succeed in creating a pill or other easy-to-use sterilizer for dogs and cats will win a $25 million prize. Details are at
www.michelson.foundanimals.org
. Another group working toward this future is
www.600million.org
, which was started by a cofounder of PETA. That group takes its name from estimates that 600 million stray dogs worldwide give birth to as many as three billion puppies every year.

A Better Life

Summer went first. I was surprised, actually, because compared to Izzy she seemed less likely to find a home fast. Like Blue, she was a little skittish. She wore life’s hard knocks on her face the way gangsters wear brass knuckles on their fingers. She wasn’t jumpy and bubbly, like Izzy. She was a little older and couldn’t be advertised as young, let alone as a puppy. She was calm and sweet and most content if she could just find a safe place to take a well-earned nap. She was the kind of dog who seems to have had the odds piled sky-high against her from the day she was born.

The family across town who applied to adopt Summer after seeing her on Facebook didn’t care that some people might find her less than perfect. They thought she was beautiful, and they wanted to give her a good home. They’d always had purebred Golden Retrievers, including their four-year-old Golden, Abbey, who was just as much a part of their family as their college-age son and high-school-age daughter. But they’d recently learned about the crisis in America’s shelters, and this time, they wanted to adopt a rescue dog instead of buying a purebred. I happened to post Summer’s photograph online pretty much to the exact day that they decided they were ready to make a difference.

I drove to their house with Summer in the backseat, and, if I’m being honest, prepared to hate these friends-of-a-Face-book-friend. Even though Summer had been with me for less than two weeks, I’d already come to love her and felt fiercely protective of her. Blue loved her, too, and I secretly hoped that the adoption wouldn’t work out. I was ready to keep her and make sure she was safe forever. I was fully prepared to become what rescuers call a “failed foster”—somebody who tries to say good-bye to a dog only to realize what she really wants to do is adopt him.

I sat for a few moments after turning off my engine in the family’s driveway, trying to find something—anything—wrong with everything around me. But the neighborhood was so quiet that I could hear birds chirping. Norman Rockwell might as well have painted the scene, it was so gosh-darn picture-perfect. I knew I had no choice but to get out of the car and take Summer inside.

When I knocked on the door and was invited in with a smile, I saw tons of room for dogs to romp and play. I saw dog toys on the floor and a water bowl nearby, just as in my own home. Their Golden Retriever, Abbey, seemed as healthy, friendly, and content as any dog in my own family. She seemed to like Summer immediately, too, going right up to her with a feverishly wagging tail.

Then I shook hands with the mom and dad. They briefly looked at me, but they couldn’t take their eyes off Summer. As I was looking up and around their house, they were looking down at her frail little body with love.

“She’s a bit shy,” I said, making excuses as Summer slowly made her way inside. She at first didn’t seem interested in getting to know their dog Abbey at all, and instead sniffed all around the kitchen to check the house out.

“That’s okay,” the dad said—and then he lay down on the kitchen floor. The mom sat down next to him, as did their daughter. “Summer will come to us when she’s ready,” the dad said as we all patiently waited.

It was like somebody was feeding this guy lines from a script, his attitude was so perfect. The whole family might as well have been a figment of my imagination. They were, quite simply, awesome.

And sure enough, after a few minutes, Summer did go to them. She played with them, she sniffed around Abbey, and she figured out where the water bowl was so that she could take a few gulps. I spent a solid hour making sure Summer was in good hands before I felt comfortable enough to say good-bye. I drew out the process of leaving the way a three-year-old hems and haws when she doesn’t want to go to bed.

As I walked out the door, leaving Summer behind, I started to cry just the same way Rhonda Beach had when she’d handed Summer over to me in the diner parking lot in North Carolina. I was so happy and sad, all at the same time. I drove down their street and had to pause for a few minutes at the first stop sign. I cursed myself for failing to have tissues in the car. I had to use my sleeve to wipe away the tears streaming down my cheeks.

Later that night, while sitting on my sofa with Blue and Izzy, I got a phone call from Summer’s new mom.

“I saw how worried you were when you left,” she told me, “so I wanted you to know that Summer and Abbey have been wrestling like old friends. They love each other. And we love her, too. She’s going to sleep with our daughter tonight, curled up in bed. She’s doing great. We’re thrilled to have her in our family.”

Yes, of course, I started weeping all over again, like I do at the movies when that rousing orchestral music starts playing during a happy ending. Blue and Izzy, sitting there staring at me on the sofa, must have thought I was ready for a straitjacket.

A few days later, it was Izzy’s turn to go home. I followed the directions to a neighborhood in Pennsylvania that turned out to be just as nice as the one where I’d left Summer. This family’s house was also on a cul-de-sac, also with a grassy yard.

I rang the front doorbell with Izzy standing next to me on her leash, and when the door opened, she leaped inside as if she owned the joint. The dad and teenage brother stood over to the side while the mom and teenage daughter sat on the foyer steps, cooing and coaxing Izzy to go over and give them a kiss.

“She’s just so gorgeous!” the mom exclaimed, petting Izzy as if she were a priceless stallion won at auction. “I can’t believe she’s ours. This is really our lucky day.”