Otero County is located three hours southeast of Denver and includes the cities of La Junta, Rocky Ford, Fowler, Manzanola, Cheraw, Swink, and Timpas, which have a collective population of 18,000 people. This hardworking community has a median family income of $35,000, and 18% of the population lives below the poverty line. No local shelters exist for families to surrender their pets, and dogs are commonly found roaming the city streets, neighborhoods, and county roads - not spayed or neutered. While cats are left as strays, dogs are picked up by local police and taken to shelters operated by the police stations with no visibility to the public. Hundreds of dogs enter the shelter every year and are placed on a 5-day stray hold for their families to come. Once their time is up, every dog faces euthanasia. Meanwhile, feral cat colonies have taken over the towns with no resources to save them.

Otero County is pleading for help to reduce its pet population. We created a survey to capture the county’s desire to fix their pets, and in 12 hours, 200 families responded with requests to spay and neuter over 400 animals. When asked why they hadn’t spayed or neutered their pet, 9.5 out of 10 respondents selected cost as the sole blocker.

We want to embrace this small community and use it as a case study for how mobile clinics can fundamentally change rural cities facing pet overpopulation and shelter crisis.

Our approach:

1. Every dog entering a city shelter picked up by a family member will be offered a voucher to have their pet spayed/neutered at a local veterinarian clinic, funded by the Angels for Angels Foundation. This will provide immediate population control for high-risk animals and provide solutions for families who want to keep their pets. We have already offered this service to 10 families.

2. We are sponsoring mobile clinics in town, which have proven to be highly successful in reducing shelter intake numbers, but need to become far more frequent. To kick start this effort, we are the primary sponsor for a December 5-7th, 2024 clinic in Swink, Colorado, to spay and neuter 360 dogs and cats at an average cost of $50 per animal. The clinic is already SOLD OUT with a wait list of hundreds of people.

Our goal is to host this clinic every quarter and fix 1,440 animals annually. We need your help.