The Spay Week silence

With less than two weeks to go to arguably the most important week in the Irish animal rescue calendar, Spay Week Ireland 2011, all is quiet. What should be one of the most exciting and anticipated grassroots events of the year, with animal rescues across Ireland working flat out to promote and publicise it at local level, there is not a word being said about it on Facebook, forums, websites or Twitter. Why?

Why is there no air of expectation, no sense of anticipation, no announcements of plans, no discussion of ideas? Perhaps behind the scenes people are working on posters, leaflets, press releases, videos, tabling events, awareness days, but if so, there is nothing to suggest it. Here is an event which should be uniting our voices as one and see us all working in a dedicated and determined way to do all we can to get the spay/neuter message out there in the public arena but that doesn't seem to be happening.

Spay Week is an extremely important week for cats and dogs in Ireland. It could and would save lives. It's an event which would have a direct impact on reducing the number of cats and dogs having unwanted litters now and in the future. It could also have a direct impact on our rescue work, reducing our work load in the future.

Spaying/neutering is the only way to decrease the number of dogs going into the pounds. It's the only way to offer feral cats any quality of life and stem their breeding. It's the best way to stop the pages of Donedeal, Buy & Sell, etc being filled with unwanted cats, dogs, pups and kittens. Spaying/neutering is the best way to stop unwanted animals being drowned, dumped, starved, poisoned. It is the only way that anything is going to change in the future. For the animals and for us. We can talk all we like about what the public should be doing, i.e. spaying/neutering their pets, but if we the rescuers are ignoring the event on the calendar which promotes and publicises it, what is that saying? What message is that giving the public? That spaying/neutering isn't really that important after all?

We are never going to stem the tide of unwanted and abandoned cats and dogs any other way including rescue and rehoming. Rescue and rehoming is essential for the individual animal, often a matter of life and death, but we must also look at the bigger picture. We must start saving lives through prevention, tackling the problem at source. We must start planning for a better time for the animals and for ourselves. Spay Week is the perfect opportunity to do it.

It must also be asked why are we not actively helping people financially with the cost of spaying/neutering their pets for that week at least? Can we not stretch to issuing a few discount vouchers for one week out of the whole year? Are we seriously saying we don't have the funds for that purpose? What better way could we spend our funds than on helping to stem the flow of animals in the future? We all get grants at the end of the year, can we not put aside some of that money for that very purpose?

Do we really care, stress or worry about the number of unwanted kittens and pups that will be born this year, many of whom will die because there are no homes for them? We can complain bitterly (and let's be honest, we do) about what's going on in the pounds and streets of this country regarding stray and unwanted dogs and cats, about what the public are or are not doing, but for one week of the year, when we, the animal rescue community, have a real opportunity to do something, to change things for the better, why aren't we doing it? Why aren't we grabbing it with both hands and shouting it from the rooftops?

Spay Week Ireland 2011 is less than two weeks away. It should be huge, it should be massive. For the animals sake and our own. It can be, it's still not too late.