Media Releases

Saving Lives Campaign

Update on the Saving Lives Campaign.

Well, we’re nearly 2 months into our Saving Lives Campaign and I thought I’d give you a bit of an update on how it’s going.

The first part of the campaign was to offer help to people with community cards (or low incomes) for desexing, vaccinating and microchipping their animals. This is the only way of getting to the heart of the problem of there being too many animals. We’ve had adverts in the papers, application for desexing forms available here at the SPCA, at Pet Essentials and at ENL (Animal Control). The applications also were sent out with every dog registration pack. We have been overwhelmed at the response from people asking for help, there are animals going in for their surgery most days and we currently have a waiting list of 200 (but it’s growing every day)

We do need your help though both to spread the word that we are offering this service and to help fund it with donations as it is us (the Whangarei SPCA) who is paying for the work to be done. No amount is too small, together we can make a difference!

This is an incredible opportunity for those people who genuinely cannot afford to pay for this surgery, we have had people in tears of gratitude at our counter, thanking us for being there for the animals, for helping them with something that they just could not afford to get done.

Unfortunately and very sadly, we’ve also had some people who are taking advantage of the scheme. People who have already made a vet appointment to get their pet desexed, heard about the scheme so cancelled the appointment so they could utilize the desexing scheme and get it done for free and people who are buying pedigree pets from petshops /online and asking us to desex them for free. This isn’t fair on the people who genuinely need the help, it could even mean that they miss out because their place on the desexing list has been taken. The result could be that we continue to be faced with unwanted and uncared for litters that we end up putting to death.

This has been a hugely exciting, busy and scary time for us here at the SPCA. The highs - getting the scheme up and running, getting to talk to all the people who so desperately want/need to get their beloved pets desexed and with their limited incomes been unable to afford it, and there are so many in this category. The lows – the people who are trying to misuse the desexing campaign. The scary – the fund-raising, getting the message across to say we need your help.

I’ll be back in touch in another month with the next update.

Francine