Already A Great Impact – Spay and Neuter Program 2010

Leaving behind the cold February winds at our clinic in Heredia, we headed for a more tropical destination. The almost four hour drive through the beautiful untouched rainforest of Death Mountain finally brought us to Dominical. Here we met up with Shawnell, Tom and Manon, the organizers of this spay and neuter project. First we visited a local farm with 14 dogs and 2 cats roaming and reproducing for several litters now. It took Dra. Laura Villegas quite some talking to convince the old farmer to have these animals neutered. But after reassuring that the male dog would really not turn into a female, and pointing out the advantages like the prevention of testicular or prostate tumors, he finally gave in. The first day we would castrate the animals we gathered from the farm and some animals in Matapalo, a small beach town, about twenty minutes drive from Dominical. It wasn’t entirely clear how many people would bring their pet to be castrated. This was the first castration project ever in Matapalo, so we didn’t expect great numbers yet. It soon turned out that we couldn’t have been more wrong: pretty much whole Matapalo was mobilized to bring anything that was furry and walked on four legs to be castrated or sterilized.

Of course the regular castrations don’t really stick to your mind after doing over 50 on one day. It’s the more extreme patients that you remember when you finally sit down. One of them was a cat that someone locked in the toilet that day. One of the volunteers found it when opening the door of the public toilet. It didn’t try to escape but just lay there. After the horrified volunteer asked me to come and see the cat as soon as I had time, I walked with her to have a look. It was no wonder that the cat didn’t move, as on first sight I could see that it’s intestines were prolapsed and covered with little black ants. Because of the seriousness of this condition and the irreversible damage to its intestine I decided to put the poor thing out of it’s misery as quickly as possible. Taking it out of the toilet and lifting its head it showed that the side of the head that was first facing down was cut by, what seemed to be a machete cut and now deeply embedded with maggots. The idea of this story however, is not to try to horrify the reader, it is merely to state how important these projects are. Apart from castrating 98 animals in Matapalo and another 34 in Dominical in just 3 days, these projects bring much more. The people in places where normally no vet comes, like Matapalo, hear about these projects and start thinking more seriously about taking care of their animals. Another great thing about going to these areas is that we can also help the more serious cases. Many times sick animals that are living on the street (or on the beach in this case) are really suffering for weeks or months, sometimes even years with severe skin problems, growing tumors or other diseases. Many of these sick animals can be treated, like one of the beach dogs in Matapalo where we removed a tumor the size of a tennis ball.

We can conclude this story saying that we made a great impact with our AHPPA Bullet Castration Program 2010. There are however still many more places to go and our mission is not over by far. You can personally support us by organizing a project in your region.

Please keep informed about our coming projects,
Viktor van Marrewijk, DVM