Spayed and Neutered

NOTE: This post is about the process involved in getting an adopted pet spayed or neutered in our town. It is not about the effect of the surgery on an animal.

We dropped our new handful off at the vet today to get spayed. Getting her into her carrier was traumatic, getting her out of the carrier at the vet office was traumatic, and being left to have a major surgery all alone is traumatic.

Here's my issue: in this town, the SPCA does not have a mandatory spay/neuter rule. So, when you pick up a pet from their facilities, or a satellite facility (like we did), you do not know if the pet is spayed or neutered. Basically, the pet has the trauma of living in a shelter's small cages, rooms, or whatever for days, weeks, months, then gets the trauma of being taken to a brand new home with new people it needs to learn about and get along with (and possibly children), and then it has to have the trauma of shots, surgery, and recovery shortly thereafter.

In the end, I think this is too much trauma for the animal to bear repeatedly over a short period of time. If, however, the SPCA had a rule that any pet brought into its facility was spayed/neutered and given its first round of shots (and they recuperated the costs when the pet was adopted), then the major traumas would all be out of the way all at once. Yes, it means that the SPCA would be constantly running a deficit in this area, as not every pet will get adopted or will be adopted quickly, but you KNOW that EVERY cat that has been to the SPCA is a) relatively healthy (due to shots being given) and b) spayed or neutered.

Alternately, when you want to adopt a pet, the adoption location arranges the pet to be sent to a vet for its shots and spay/neuter via the SPCA. This is performed by one of the in-network vets, they keep the animal overnight to make sure everything is okay, and then the facility (whether SPCA or satellite) keeps the pet for a couple of days to ensure it is eating and drinking. When you come to pick the pet up and take it to its "furever" home, you are seen only as the white knight and your and its only job from that point forward for the next year (until booster shots are needed) is to bond and love one another.

As it is, our little Sapphire is now associating us with going to the vet, getting shots, and now major, traumatic surgery. She is scared of her carrier case and, when we try to put her in it, she freaks out and becomes violent. All of this coming just one month after entering our home and the trauma of learning the rules here, leaving its previous environment, and learning to get along with our existing pet.

I think I've proposed at least two better, less traumatic ways to deal with this.

Economics 101

All the experts know that there is simply only one way to solve a recession/depression -- for people to spend money. It is a little counter-intuitive to those who don't understand the way economics work, but that is the simple truth.

What I don't understand is why the President or some of his top people don't do PSAs that state this. Maybe have Al Gore come on and do a send-up of his Oscar winning movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and show bar graphs and pie-charts that explain that when you spend money, it trickles through the economy and impacts, literally, hundreds of other people, jobs, and businesses.

For example, you go down to your local eatery of choice. You spend $50 for you and your honey to have a nice meal. That $50 and your presence at the restaurant causes the owner to have to hire and pay a server, a cook, a dishwasher/cleaner (each of whom then have money to spend on their own things). The owner also has to buy groceries from his distributor so he can make your meal, which then gives money to that distributor. Who then has to buy his goods from the manufacturers of the food products, which gives them money. And on each step of the way, each person or business who gets paid has to in turn spend more money on personnel to work the jobs and on other goods and services, all the way to the farmer who owned the cow and had to pay for water, grain, breeding, people to work the farm, etc.

Now, this system is slow. It provides for a strong foundation and is the most solid way to bring an economy out of a recession, but it is slow. Which is why so many countries in recessions go a faster route that works nearly the same way- war. War brings people into the military, and pays them to be there. It also pays for various businesses to make uniforms, guns, ammunition, bombs, electronics, food/rations, tires, oil, and everything else needed by the military to equip, train, and maintain those military people in the war. The same trickle down effect of the money pervading the country's economy works, but it works much faster than the first method.

This method of trickling money through an entire economy is so useful and successful that many charities have switched to this method of "donating" money to poor countries. Rather than just sending in experts to build something in a third-world country, they provide very small "micro loans" to an existing (or new) business owner. The act of that business owner building his business, hiring more people, buying his goods and services is more successful at raising the economy of the entire region than just giving the people food or sending in experts to build stuff for them. And, more importantly, it teaches them independence and the value of the money to them and their community.

This simple concept is foreign to so many, as they don't pay attention or do not take any sort of simple economics class. So, have our leadership or hire some high-profile actors to do PSAs to get this information out to the general public. By spending money you actually save the country and will, in the long-term, have more money to spend/save as you see fit.


Caveat: This message does not address the need for people to only spend within their means and to save for their future responsibly. These ideas would need their own PSAs and may be addressed in future blog posts by this author, as he sees fit or gets riled up about something.