Operation Kindness will be lending services to aid multiple animal shelters in Fort Worth struggling with their full-capacity populations.
The organization has partnered with the City of Fort Worth to provide spay and neuter services at Fort Worth shelters, lending resources and vet technicians to help perform spay and neuter surgeries, according to Fort Worth Report. Officials hope this initiative will move animals more quickly through the system and improve efficiency.
“You can’t afford to waste an hour of an animal unnecessarily sitting in a cage when it could be moving forward, let alone days or weeks,” said Ed Jamison, CEO of Operation Kindness, per FWR. “Every minute they’re sitting in an enclosure that they could be moving forward is slowing down the process, or quite frankly, potentially taking cage space away from another needy animal.”
Chris McAllister, assistant director over animal care and control for Fort Worth, said that local shelters are consistently at total capacity and typically accept 50 animals per day. He also noted that Operation Kindness personnel had completed over 200 surgeries in the first week of the initiative, which began on December 21.
McAllister also reported difficulties enforcing city ordinances requiring pet owners to spay or neuter their animals. City officials believe that owners’ effort to conduct these procedures is the “easiest and most effective way to correct today’s critical pet overpopulation problem,” according to the city’s website.
“The truth is, we’re never going to cite our way into compliance. It has to be through education,” said McAllister, per FWR. “I can spay and neuter 100 dogs a day for the next 10 years, and I don’t know if that’s going to control the population the way we need to see it controlled.”
Animal services in Fort Worth are not the only local entities receiving aid from this organization. Operation Kindness also partnered with the City of Dallas to unveil a new “Lifesaving Partnerships Hub” to offer veterinary services to struggling shelters, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.