Right before moving to the other side of the world, a group of us decided that it would be a wonderful idea to try and pull off a no cost spay and neuter clinic for pets of the homeless population, in one month… Yes, we are an ambitious group, sometimes too ambitious.

Demi’s Animal Rescue doesn’t just believe in rehoming pets. To be successful at putting a dent in pet homelessness, that is simply not enough. We wanted to go to the source, preventing more unwanted dogs and cats through spay and neuter.

The goal is to target pets and people that weren’t currently being helped. After a very long process, which is a whole other post in itself, we found ourselves back at home, in the city of Denver. We decided that our clinic should target homeless people and their pets providing veterinary care at no cost. The goal was to make the largest impact we could. We provided spay and neuter surgeries, vaccinations, collars and leashes, ID Tags, and pet food… LOTS OF IT!

We worked quickly to present a proposal to homeless shelters or other non profit organizations that help Denver’s homeless population. This is when we met Colorado Coalition for the Homeless.

Colorado Coalition for the Homeless provides temporary housing for the chronically homeless. This means that these are people that have been out on the streets for years, often times due to circumstances such as mental illness. They have 18 housing locations spread throughout Colorado and do wonderful work.

There is truly a feeling unlike any other and that is when you finally have someone (or in this case an organization) believe in you and what you want to accomplish. When they called and told me that we finally had a green light on the clinic, I honestly could not believe it. First off, because we had a month before I left the country at this point. Second, because we had an organization so successful and much larger than ours willing to be our teammate.

It was game on from there. Colorado Coalition for the Homeless was willing to provide the facility and get their people, with their pets, there and we were up for organizing the rest! Keep in mind that while we’ve assisted with spay and neuter clinics, as an organization, none of us had ever completely organized a spay and neuter clinic before. It was exhilarating as things came together, but the feeling of tears building up and feeling like you’re about to vomit at any moment in fear that your ambitions and goals may have been a bit too large, never went away.

Everyone came together to create something beautiful… People that have supported us for years, people that had caught wind of it and had never heard of us before. Veterinarians’ meeting with us to make sure the medical side was handled. Seeing a community pull together to provide something to improve the lives of others (humans and pets alike) is something I believe every person should experience. The feeling that everyone pushed it to be a little bit more successful or helped one more pet. We even had a good friend and supporter bring by donuts on his way to work for the volunteers, just to see that everyone had a slightly bigger smile. It provides a euphoric feeling that great things can happen when we all work together.

 

As we were setting up, a little white fluff ball came skipping into the room. Confused I looked around and her owner followed and asked what we were doing. I proceeded to tell him about the clinic and what time to come in the morning. I emphasized that it was completely free. He proceeded to tell me that he would be there for food and vaccinations, but that he didn’t want his dog to be hurt by the surgery. I informed him that for this event, his dog had to be fixed to receive anything, but if he got it done he could have as much as he wanted. This man had one of those corky “give you the run around” type personalities. Thankfully I am pretty good at participating with those types of people. So after going back and forth I said,

“Well you’re going to regret this when she goes into heat!”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“It’s a dog period. It’s pretty gross actually. When it happens all the boy dogs will be all over your baby girl and you will have to buy her diapers so she doesn’t leave blood all over your apartment. All I am saying is when it happens you’re going to think of me and say to yourself that you should’ve taken advantage of this opportunity.”

 

He was one of the first people in line the next morning…

All funny stories aside, I have never helped a group of people quite like this. It was extremely different from any other spay and neuter clinic I have been a part of. The only reason people didn’t want to have their pets fixed was that they didn’t want them to get hurt. There were no “I need my dog to be masculine” or “I would like to see what her puppies would look like.” It was a simple, “I have never had an opportunity.” Everyone was so blown away by what was being provided that they were working with us to get their pets there before work or trying to get their family members there. We had people coming to thank us that didn’t even have pets. They were the most thankful group of people and not only that; they truly loved their pets and were open to doing what was right. That is when I realized we targeted the right group. Not only did we target a population that needed the services, but we targeted a population that wanted them. 

I have an enormous amount of people to thank and I cant list them all or all of the companies that donated supplies, but if you had anything to do with this project. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for participating. We can accomplish so much more together.

For those of you wondering… yes it does look like this event will happen again!