Here's a recent exchange between a Member and myself:

Question from Amber:
Hi,
My name is Amber Osbon and I am the Spay Neuter Director for PAWS of Northeast Louisiana. We are a non profit pet welfare group without a shelter. We choose to place our focus on s/n, adoption, fostering, ID tags, rescue, fostering, education, etc. S/N being the solution, of course. We pull pets from our local high kill shelter and get them into rescues as often as we can. Okay,..enough rambling......

Our problem is this.... WE CAN'T GET ENOUGH PEOPLE IN OUR COMMUNITY TO S/N THEIR PETS! We have an income based spay neuter program. We obtain grants and raise money to fund it. Last year only approximately 270 pets were s/n through our program. I believe our cities, Monroe and West Monroe, census is about 150,000. People ought to be bombarding us for help, but they're not. They aren't applying because they don't care! Recently we had two billboards up and good media attention about them. The billboards read "Ouachita parish's pets are dying for you to be responsible! Spay & Neuter your pets. It stops the killing" (Click on our myspace page www.myspace.com/pawsnela and scroll down to see the newscast. Keep in mind, the guy being interviewed is the animal control officer from the high kill shelter where we pull pets from)

We need help on HOW do we get them to care? How do we change this areas culture? We can publicize that over 7,000 pets are needlessly euthanized to control the population in our parish (like a county) each year and we can say it until we're blue in the face, but if the community is insensitive to that fact and overpopulation in general, then it does no good. We've recently started PAWS 4 Learning which is humane education, but that's not enough. I've read Faith Maloney's wonderful article about giving good advice http://www.bestfriends.org/nomorehomelesspets/pdf/goodadvice.pdf and appealing to the self interest of individuals to get them to s/n for whatever reason works in their situation. I want to further this idea and really use that as our new or additional method in getting folks to s/n but I have not been able to find any ideas about how to market from that angle. No examples of slogans or campaigns. I am beyond NOT creative when it comes to things like this, but I know this is the direction we have to go to make a difference.

Sorry for rambling on, but we are desparate for help. We've plugged away at this for over 5 yrs now and it wasn't until I had a conversation with my vet the other day that I realized that I am just banging my head against the wall until the community itself changes and sees s/n in a different light.... a self benefitting light!

Please send some advice! Thanks so much for everything you do for pets and the wealth of information you provide for the world so we can try to follow suit.
Amber Osbon Spay / Neuter Director PAWS of N.E. LA
www.pawsnela.com www.myspace.com/pawsnela www.parishpets.petfinder.com

My response:
Dear Amber,

Thank you so much for your amazing letter that touches the very heart of how to most effectively spread “Spay/Neuter Fever” in your area! You are so right that the most effective approach is showing potential clients how easy it is to improve their lives if they get their pets fixed.

There is a new Best Friends online community on the Best Friends Network to promote spay/neuter, answer questions & invite discussion, called Spay/Neuter Fever! at http://network.bestfriends.org/spayneuter/news/ Please join us there and get involved! I think you’ll find the following especially helpful:

Spreading Spay/Neuter Fever blog

http://network.bestfriends.org/Blogs/Detail.aspx?b=1038

One particular post with specific marketing/promo ideas that would be perfect for your area.

I thought you might find the following FAQ that I wrote for Best Friends interesting (it hasn’t been posted yet, it’s brand new). It’s geared toward cats, but could easily be changed for male cats/dogs and explains the nastiness that goes along with having an intact male around:

Question:Do male cats really need to be neutered?

Response:It is better for a tom cat’s health, longevity and relationship with you, your neighbors and other animals to be neutered. The ideal age to have a male cat neutered is before he reaches reproductive maturity, which can occur in males as young as 5 months of age.

Male cats who are neutered instead of going through puberty are less likely to:

Urine mark (spray), which can develop into a life-long habit
Roam, possibly getting hit by a car or otherwise coming to harm
Fight, resulting in painful and expensive to treat abscesses
Contract FIV (90% of Feline Immunodeficiency Virus infected are unneutered, mature, roaming males)
Develop strong-smelling urine
Develop a greasy, infected “Stud Tail,” often with clogged pores and mats
Display aggression & dominance toward humans or other animals

Most of the above are temporary, caused by increased testosterone, which will never develop in cats who are fixed before puberty, and can take up to 30 days to alleviate after neutering for mature cats.

When it comes to having a cat neutered, time is of the essence.

Here’s a possible slogan I just thought of:

Tired of Stinky Cat (Dog) Pee? Fix Him for a $5 Fee!

For females, the yuckiness includes:

Messy, bloody heats (for a dog)
Noisy, quarrelsome heats (for a cat)
Possible post-heat pyometria infection, which means expensive vet bills
Males coming around hoping to mate and mucking up the property
She’ll eat her people out of house and home while she’s pregnant/lactating, up to or including digging in the trash, becoming food aggressive or getting on the counter if she’s not fed enough due to the caloric intake required to produce and nurse a litter (cats commonly lose ¼ of their body weight while lactating a growing litter).
Having to figure out what to do with the puppies/kittens
Having to figure out what to do if there are pregnancy/birth complications or if any of the offspring are sick or deformed

You may need to instigate a door-to-door pick-up and drop-off shuttle program if people aren’t taking initiative…ANYthing to get those critters fixed! Besides, that gives volunteers a chance to scope out the place and ask questions (what about the female pit tied up in the back, I can take her to get fixed, too...). When I worked with POPPA, we subsidized spay/neuter for about 3,000 animals from low income situations annually. We had a firm policy that we would only help if ALL of the animals in a household were fixed. Otherwise, there were some families who would only want the males fixed, or only the females, or leave a breeding pair intact.

Oh, and we posted testimonials from recipients, too (1/2 of our recipients requested help via our convenient online form). You can see some clients’ words here

Please let me know if you have any further questions after exploring the links above!

In kindness,
Celeste
Member Support
No More Homeless Pets
Best Friends Network
Best Friends Animal Society
5001 Angel Canyon
Kanab, UT 84741
435-644-3965 ext. 4829
celestec@bestfriends.org
http://network.bestfriends.org/nmhp
www.bestfriends.org
“A better world through kindness to animals.”

Hi Celeste,

I'd love to respond to Amber, but don't see her email address.

Being from south Louisiniana, where very many people are Catholic (or were brought up Catholic), I have occasionally heard that some people don't want to "fix" their pets because of their religious beliefs. Worth noting, however, is that S/N assistance funds in our area do tend to be used up very quickl

(Usually, I think that people just don't care, as Amber said, and that benefits of spay/neuter and other humane education are of utmost importance.

Quite by accident, I thought of one approach to use as a was to discuss S/N iwith strict Catholics. My dad was hospitalized (in a Catholic Hospital), and I was not happy with the care he was receiving. I spoke with a Patient Care Representative who was a Nun.
Near the end of our conversation, I mentioned that I had to leave to pick up a couple of pets who had been "fixed" that day. Their was not a response from the nun at first.......then I said, "Sister, we just can't teach them pets to abstain"............

Both of us had a good laugh, and I headed to the vet's office, feeling better.

I know that the Monroe area does not have as many strict Catholics as Cajun Country does, but I thought this (my explanation to the nun) might be helpful if the situation arises.

I think that, if funds are available, offering S/N assistance only if all animals in the household are spayed or neutered would be helpful. Also, I truly believe that humane education needs to be a major focus in our push to get pets "fixed" in Louisiana and and in other states in the south.

Amber, thanks for your great work. I hope you can find strength, in spite of your frustration, to continue with your mission. We can't stop working now.....

Allyson