This week’s Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) contains an article about the people and the animals who use nonprofit spay neuter clinics. The full title of the study is Characteristics of clients and animals served by high-volume, stationary, nonprofit spay-neuter clinics. I conducted this study along my co-authors Julie Levy and Jan Scarlett, two superstars of shelter medicine who were both great collaborators and great mentors on this project.
The data for the study comes from surveys of thousands of clients bringing their cats or dogs to stationary spay neuter clinics all over the US over the course of one year.
If you were lucky, you may have seen me presenting the results of this study in 2015 at the North American Veterinary Conference or at the SAWA/National Council on Pet Population research day. Below, I’ll describe the study using some graphics from these original presentations (which are more colorful and varied and less copyrighted than those in JAVMA). We have a press release available on the Million Cat Challenge website too, which you might want to check out to learn more about the study and its interpretation.
The Study Clinics
We wanted to be sure to include clinics and clients from all over the US, in case there were regional differences in the types of clients or pets who use spay neuter clinics. Similarly, we wanted to be sure to include different times of year, in case there was a seasonality to clinic patients. In order to make sure we chose clinics from all over, we divided the US into 4 regions (actually, the Census Bureau did the dividing) and tried to get proportional representation from each region. Here is what that looked like:
Once we selected the clinics, we asked them each to survey all clients bringing cats or dogs to the clinic during four specific weeks over the course of a year. Clients would fill out a survey for up to two animals and answer questions about themselves as well as about their pet. We didn’t ask feral cat caretakers or shelters and rescues to fill out surveys, and we also didn’t get surveys from clients whose pets arrived at the clinic in transport vehicles.
The Animals
Overall, about half of the 12,901 animals that clinics saw during the study weeks were brought to the clinic by owners, and the other half consisted of shelter animals, ferals, and animals arriving by transport vehicle.
Again, only the drop-off at clinic animals were eligible for the study. About 2/3 of these animals (4,056 animals) ended up being included. Among those, there was a pretty equal split between males and females, and between dogs and cats.
The ages of animals varied, but overall, felines were being altered younger than canines:
The age and species composition varied somewhat around the US, with the Northeast having more cats, and the West having more dogs.
Among the adult female patients, 28% of the cats and 17% of the dogs had had a previous litter. Most of these cats (66%) had only had one litter, whereas just over half of these dogs (51%) had two or more litters before being spayed.
Previous Veterinary Care
The animals, especially the cats, had limited previous exposure to veterinary medicine. For most of these pets, this was their first time seeing a veterinarian.
Even more alarming from a public health perspective, very few of the cats over 4 months old had ever received a rabies vaccination. The dogs were more likely to have had a rabies vaccine, which we attributed to licensing requirements and the availability of rabies vaccine clinics.
The Clients
We asked clients to share their annual household income, and found that most clients’ incomes fell below the national median household income, and below each of the regional median incomes. This was true whether they were bringing dogs or cats or both to the clinic, although cat owners tended to have lower income than dog owners:
We found similar income distributions among all regions, with the lowest client incomes in the Northeast, where the clinics also see more cats:
The Reasons
We asked clients why they were choosing to get their pets neutered now, and also why they chose to come to the spay neuter clinic. They were allowed to choose as many answers as they liked.
Population control, avoiding heat, and behavioral reasons were the top choices for both cat and dog owners when asked reasons for getting their pet neutered now:
Cost, recommendations, and reputation were the top reasons why clients chose the nonprofit spay neuter clinic instead of other options:
The Takeaways
Even though most of the study clinics didn’t screen for income, the majority of the people and animals that they served fell into the low income demographic, with about a quarter of clients falling below the poverty line. We can also see from the survey results that the majority of these pets had never seen a veterinarian before. For the most part, nonprofit spay neuter clinics are reaching the people who most need their services and who would likely not get those services elsewhere, or who would struggle to pay for those services if they did receive them elsewhere.
Also, remember that client-owned animals only made up about half of the patients that participating clinics saw during the study period. These clinics also spayed or neutered thousands of homeless animals during the study weeks: remember that 24% of the clinics’ patients were shelter animals, and another 18% of the patients were feral cats. Even though these animals weren’t included in the study, they are a huge part of the work that nonprofit spay and neuter clinics do and should always be factored in to the value of what clinics provide.
As a spay neuter vet, I was also happy to see that clinics enjoyed a good reputation among clients such that reputation and referrals from friends were two of the top three reasons clients gave for choosing the clinic. So clients feel that they are getting not just an affordable service, but a high-quality service as well.