Started in 1994 as a bold idea in a small building, the Humane Alliance Spay/Neuter Clinic of Asheville is taking its operation to a new facility at 25 Heritage Drive.
Funded by $1 million each from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and PetSmart Charities, the clinic will not only continue its low-cost spaying-and-neutering mission, but will become a state-of-the-art national training center. The grand opening is Tuesday, June 17, at 11 a.m., and includes ta performance by Firecracker Jazz Band.
The new 13,000-square-foot facility, as outlined in an ASPCA press release, will have the capacity to sterilize 250 pets per day — more than double the average for normal spay/neuter facilities. And its training curriculum will further spread its successful format for high-quality, high-volume surgical sterilizations that the Asheville facility has pioneered nationally. The local nonprofit has mentored clinics that have in turn sterilized more than 250,000 dogs and cats nationwide, according to the ASPCA, and since its beginning, the Asheville clinic has collectively serviced 180,000 pets from Buncombe and other WNC counties in their mission to help end pet overpopulation.
For more details, visit the clinic’s Web site or call 252-2079.
— Nelda Holder, associate editor
This is a great step forward. I was there for the opening and it’s a fabulous new facility. Spaying and neutering is a big part of the answer to ending companion animal overpopulation, and in Asheville it is very affordable thanks to the clinic. Financial assistance is also available for those in need. Millions of dogs and cats are killed and taken to the landfill every year in America simply because there are no homes for them.
Please get your animal fixed and adopt a homeless animal rather than buying from a breeder or pet shop. Breeding equals killing, because every time someone buys an animal one the could have instead been adopted from a shelter or rescue group is killed.
Check out this provocative spay/neuter video public pervice announcement:
“Buy One, Get One Killed:”
http://www.peta.org/feat/abc/video1.asp
While at that page, also check out the videos “Wrong Meeting?” and “Sex Talk.”
I’m sure many dogs and cats would disagree that this is really ‘fixing’ … especially the males.
Ralph,
Have you ever thought about the consequences of not spaying and neutering? Packs of dogs would be attacking people, spreading rabies, etc. Taxpayers currently foot the bill to round up, house and kill the animals and send them to the landfill. Our taxes would skyrocket due to the increased animal control costs as well as the public health costs.
Spaying and neutering also provides health benefits to the animals. There is much scientific medical information available on the subject.
The most responsible and compassionate thing anyone who cares about the proliferation of unwanted dogs and cats can do is to support neutering and spaying. It’s not even seriously debatable, and as Stewart correctly points out, there is voluminous scientific support for this. One can only assume that Ralph Roberts is being, or trying to be, humorous. If he’s serious, however, I look forward to the results of his polling of dogs and cats on this question.
Stewart and Dionysis, you guys have absolutely no sense of humor. … lighten up! ;-)
Have you ever thought about the consequences of not spaying and neutering? Packs of dogs would be attacking people, spreading rabies, etc. Taxpayers currently foot the bill to round up, house and kill the animals and send them to the landfill. Our taxes would skyrocket due to the increased animal control costs as well as the public health costs.
Stewart, when I was a child, most pets were not spayed or neutered and I do not recall roving packs of dogs and cats terrorizing the neighborhoods with rabies and gang mentalities. I know our taxes were a lot lower.
“Fixed”…yeah, it’s a little misleading. That’s why I say I got my pet “broken”, and just in time!
“Stewart and Dionysis, you guys have absolutely no sense of humor. … lighten up! ;-)”
Sure I have a sense of humor, Ralph. Here is an example:
“I do not recall roving packs of dogs and cats terrorizing the neighborhoods with rabies and gang mentalities. I know our taxes were a lot lower.”
Extra, extra, read all about it…high taxes promotes rabies! Extra, extra…
no, that’s not humor … that’s what passes for journalism today. To be humorous it should be something both unexpected and unlikely … that’s why folks laugh…
for example, a fox caught by a shotgun toting farmer, squinting his eyes against the beam of a flashlight and saying “don’t shoot, I’m a vegetarian” has elements of humor because one does not expect a fox to a) talk or b) be a vegetarian
to make it even funnier (in this in-group of endless debating meaters vs. beaners, the fox could add “besides, Stewart said you humans had quit eating chickens.”
then one of the chickens could add “when Stewart convinces the foxes to stop eating chickens only THEN will we be free.”
then the farmer says, “Well, I am a good stewart of my poultry and no danged fox is gonna get any!”
BLAM
and another chicken says, “well, that’s another joke that laid an egg.”
and the fox, running through the woods with his hind parts still smoking from the shotgun blast says “I think that was an allegory of some sort but danged if I can figure it out.”
and all of the above makes about as much sense as the endless vegan rationales for not eating meat.
Yessir, those are some real rib-ticklers alright.
at least I DO see the humor in all this, too many of the vegan/animal rights crowd don’t and it gets right tedious as we say up here in the hills.