PABLO — The Arlee Rehabilitation Center has held two free mass spay and neuter clinics a year to help combat the stray dog and cat problem on the Flathead Indian Reservation for the past three years.
This clinic was held over the weekend at Salish Kootenai College's gymnasium and was completely run by volunteers.
Clinic organizer Filip Panusz says having an abundance of stray animals in a community is dangerous and this is a potential solution to that problem.
“We are a trauma healing project we are not an animal rescue but almost every single trauma case that we deal with, all of those problems can be traced back to lack of spay and neuter services,” Panusz said.
With around 60 volunteers and a handful of professional vets, everyone involved worked hard to ensure the animals were handled with care and treated efficiently.
One of the young volunteers Pia Koelle has seen the impact having a free service like this one brings to the community.
“It’s really amazing because I know how hard some people work just to get a steady income,” Koelle said.
“And I know that they also stress out about having animals because they must love the animals but they don’t want them to worry about them having to reproduce all the time and I think it’s really selfless of Filip to put this stuff on," Koelle continued.
The clinic was expected to treat around 200 dogs over the weekend.
Panusz says this could cut the stray population down significantly which would spread less sickness and make the reservation a safer place.
“That’s a ton of puppies not born and so in these communities,” Panusz said.
“We’re starting to really see the benefit of what we’re doing the numbers are slowly coming down so we’re gonna have less crisis we’re gonna have less parvo, we’re gonna have less accidents, and less trauma, and that’s ultimately all we care about.”
More information on the next clinic and how to volunteer can be found on theArlee Rehabilitation Center's Facebook page.
