Long Beach Animal Care Services is catching up on a backlog of unaltered cats, dogs and rabbits that had been adopted through the HomeFirst program at the shelter during the pandemic. Now, several mobile clinics are bolstering the shelter’s effort to get each one of them fixed.
HomeFirst was initially conceived as a foster-to-adopt program. It was initiated in shelters across the country in 2020 as a response to facility overcrowding and a shortage of veterinarians during the COVID-1 pandemic. However, when the emergency situation forced a choice between getting unaltered animals into homes as soon as possible and euthanizing them, LBACS management went with the former and adopted many of them out.
“In our world of sheltering, animals have to leave to make room for other animals, which left a huge problem: how do animals leave adopted if they’re not fixed?” asked LBACS’ interim director, Melanie Wagner. “For all of us in the field at this time, the only solution was to make the choice between spaying and neutering before leaving the facility or euthanasia for space, which really isn’t much of a choice. Obviously, progressive leadership is going to opt for the outcome that saves lives.”