Montreal targets pet overpopulation with sterilization drive

MONTREAL—Next Tuesday marks Quebec's first Spay and Neuter Day, animal shelters and veterinarians will promote the benefits of having pets sterilized and the City of Montreal is lending its support to the campaign.

According to the experts, pet overpopulation is a huge problem for the island. Montreal’s SPCA has no shortage of dogs and cats; none leave the shelter without being either spayed or neutered.

“We have a vet working full-time, six days a week just doing spay/neuter surgeries,” said the SPCA’s Alanna Devine.

Roughly 8,000 sterilizations are performed annually. A survey by Quebec’s veterinarians estimates the province's dog population at 1 million and the cat population at 1.5 million.

“We estimated the numbers in the hundreds of thousands of cats and dogs [put down] every year,” Chantal Allinger from Quebec’s Veterinary Association said about the staggering number of animals put down annually in the province. “We're talking about mostly young and healthy animals.”

While the vets estimate most pets are sterilized, the SPCA says a lot of the animals coming through its doors have not been fixed.

Devine estimates the sterilization rate of animals that arrive at the SPCA at 2 per cent. She says Quebec is behind the times when it comes to animal overpopulation and responsible animal services.

“Whereas if you look at British Columbia, Ontario or even Calgary, Alberta there are city-funded or non-profit funded spay and neuter clinics for people who want to sterilize their animal but can't afford to.”

Almost all the dogs that end up at the SPCA, about 97 per cent, find a home, but it's a very different story for cats.

“For cats we're still fighting an uphill battle,” said Devine. “Our euthanasia rate is about 30 per cent.”

The SPCA and veterinary association say if people were more mindful of the need for sterilization, fewer animals would have to be put down.