In Norfolk, Virginia, on January 31, 2024, PETA announced that despite the widespread reduction in services by various animal shelters and veterinary clinics due to workforce shortages, their mobile spay/neuter clinics and field operations continued to offer free services. These included delivering food, doghouses, straw bedding, and supplies to dogs constantly kept outdoors, offering counseling and veterinary care to prevent people from surrendering their pets, and providing euthanasia services for seriously ill or aggressive animals belonging to low-income families.
Despite the reduction in services by many animal groups, PETA has allocated nearly $3 million for feeding, sterilizing, and providing veterinary care to animals in Virginia and North Carolina.
PETA is actively encouraging government officials and the public to join in solving the homeless animal crisis through preventative measures such as spaying/neutering, adoption over purchasing, and reporting neglect. The urgency of this appeal is underscored by the millions of dogs and cats entering U.S. shelters each year, with many others left to suffer on the streets, especially now with shelters unable to accommodate more animals.
In 2023, PETA’s efforts in underprivileged areas encompassed:
- Sterilizing over 11,870 animals through its mobile clinics, preventing countless potential births into homelessness.
- Providing essential care and supplies to over 7,000 dogs living outdoors permanently.
- Rehoming or transferring more than 725 animals to shelters for adoption.
- Offering over 3,000 families free counseling and veterinary services for their pets.
- Delivering approximately 200 sturdy doghouses and straw bedding to tethered or penned dogs.
- Facilitating nearly 750 free animal transports to and from their clinics for owners without transportation means.
Thank you, PETA, for helping the animals everyone else seems to have forgotten about. I urge everyone who cares to do something to end animal overpopulation, homelessness, neglect, and suffering: Work to ban chaining and pass spay/neuter laws, always adopt from shelters (never buy animals from breeders or pet stores), have your own animals spayed or neutered, and help others have their animals “fixed” too.