March 3, 2009

With the support of a rented $1 van from Animal Care and Control, one New York City veterinarian is hoping to tackle stray pet overpopulation with free spay/neuter operations.(Photo Courtesy of the Toby Project)

NYC Offers $1 Van for Free Spay/Neuters: A veterinarian is performing no-cost spay and neuter procedures right on the city streets. This dream just became a reality with the help of the NYC Mayor's Alliance, which is leasing the operating van for a mere $1 a year.

NEW YORK -- New York City's battle against stray overpopulation -- and the inevitable high euthanasia rates it creates -- just received another soldier ready to take on the cause.

Andrew Kaplan, DVM, has formally launched his free spay/neuter initiative, "Toby's Project," operating out of a van he is leasing from NYC Animal Care and Control for $1 a year.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg appeared with Kaplan to announce the NYC Mayor's Alliance's partnership with the program on Feb. 24, which was also the Humane Society of the United States' 15th annual spay/neuter day.

The mayor described the collaboration, Kaplan recalled, as the "perfect marriage between city and private, and the perfect example of doing a lot with a little."

"In business and in government, you rarely find better or cheaper ways of tackling problems unless you approach them from innovative new directions," Bloomberg said in a released statement. "Millions of New Yorkers are pet owners, and millions more share the goals of reducing the number of abandoned pets and finding every pet a home."

"It's great," Jane Hoffman, president of Mayor's Alliance, told ZT Pet News about Kaplan's program. "Any time we can increase our capacity, it's great. We need all the help we can get."

Kaplan, a head veterinarian at City Veterinary Care, located on the Upper West Side, has long recognized the importance of reducing city shelters' high intake numbers.

"For decades, we have been trying to control the overpopulation problem in this city, and it is really well known the only way to do this is to prevent the births in the first place," Kaplan said. "We can't just kill our way out of this problem."

A new sense of urgency to act began to nag at Kaplan, though, nearly eight years ago, when he befriended a young dog caged in a city adoption van.

"There was this cute, tan dog, and I said 'hi' to him and he was very friendly to me," Kaplan said. "He had codes on his cage that labeled him aggressive and un-adoptable, and that was very confusing to me.

"I questioned his existence there and wondered why someone would peg him as aggressive. He was very kissy with me. I asked people, and they all said they didn't know why he was there."

Kaplan initially decided to take the puppy home, though not to adopt him for himself; within a few days, the dog nuzzled his way under the veterinarian's skin.

"I was not going to let him go," Kaplan said.

That dog, named Toby, grew up into "80 pound beautiful wolf-mix kind-of-dog," Kaplan said. Toby is also the namesake for the program -- but Kaplan says the modest dog doesn't have a clue about the legacy he is creating.

"It's a tribute to him," Kaplan said of his dog. "He got out of the city shelter, and every dog, we believe, should have a chance to get out of the city shelter."

Even better, Kaplan says, is not being admitted into the shelter, in the first place.

It took a few years for Kaplan to translate his knowledge and passion into a tangible program. The heavily discounted van, in the end, allowed him to cut some major costs and begin offering free spay/neuter procedures to low-income pet owners on Feb. 15.

Kaplan and his team are presently targeting the Bronx, which is home to a significant number of strays.

"The idea was to target pet owners that can't afford to get the procedure done, and to focus on areas where out greatest intakes come from," said Richard Gentles, spokesman for NYC Animal Care and Control.

Making the procedure free -- and readily accessible -- was key, Kaplan said.

"We felt very strongly that we wanted to make this as accessible as possible, bring the van to people and make the services free," he explained.

"I can't tell you how happy it makes me that this is all for free. I want people to know how serious I am about this and I wanted to put a stamp on this."

Many of the pets Kaplan sees have never had a veterinary examination, let alone any vaccines; the only requirements for treatment, he says, is that the animals are between 4-months and 5-years of age, in addition to not being overweight and in perfect health.

Animals who arrive at the van with small medical problems, like ear mites or fleas, will also go home with treatment. Kaplan says the Toby Project is trying to rouse the resource to offer rabies vaccines for free.

Pet owners can drop their animals off at the van in the morning, at around 7 a.m. The program works on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Operations are conducted by one in-house vet, as well as several volunteer medics, from 9 a.m. to around 1 p.m. The time-frame grants the pets needed time to recover from the anesthesia before their owners pick them up in the early afternoon.

Gentles says the program "certainly fills a need." Offering the van for a meager $1 a year lease, he says, was in the city's best interest, as well.

"The van wasn't really being utilized, very much, and we know that spay/neuters are key to reducing the number of animals that enter our shelter," he said. "That's why we are so excited about this partnership."

Even though he acquired the van for next to nothing, Kaplan is still constantly met with the challenges of fundraising. In the past year, he says, Toby's Project raised around $180,000 from private donations. The veterinarian also personally contributed an additional $50,000 -- and plans to continue doing so in the years to come.

It costs around $90 to operate on each animal in the van, he says; that price -- and time -- factor allows Kaplan's team to fix around 10 animals a day, four days a week.

The long-term goal is to complete 35,000 spay/neuter procedures a year. As of now, each van could potentially host around 6,000 surgeries a year, or 15 each working day, Kaplan says.

"We found that we would have to spay and neuter 59,000 low income pets for five years straight to get the overpopulation problem under control," Kaplan said. "Looking at what is going on now, the ASPCA does around 20 to 25,000 spay/neuters a year, which leaves us shy about 30 to 35,000. The Toby Project wants to contribute to that number."

Various other organizations offer low-cost -- and sometimes free -- spay/neuter procedures across the city; the ASPCA, for example, is set to add a fifth veterinary clinic van to its roster in the city.

The efforts across the board have made a significant impact within the past six years. In 2002, city shelters admitted 31,908 animals, according to the Mayor's Alliance. Seventy four percent, or 31,908 animals, were euthanized that year.

Both intake and euthanasia rates have steadily decreased since then; in 2005, 53 percent of the 43,618 animals shelters took in were euthanized. In 2008, out of the 42,248 animals that entered shelter doors, only 39 percent, or 16,706 pets, were put down.

The Toby Project has helped curb that number with the 55 pets it has fixed over the past two weeks. That number may seem small, but within one year, according to the program's estimation, those pets' sterilization could avoid 880 stray births; in six years, that number could rise to 3,685,000.

For more information about the Toby Project and its services, visit TobyProject.org.

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