News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
After coming close to shutting down two years ago, The Spay Neuter Incentive Program of Overton County (SNIP-OC) continues to advocate for spaying and neutering as the best solution to the local animal population.
President Norman Osburn said SNIP-OC is a program that helps people access veterinarians and pay for the procedures to get their pets spayed and neutered. Osburn said there has been discussion about the possibility of an animal shelter in the county, but budget concerns have prevented the plan up to this point.
“With a shelter like the one Putnam County has, they figured when they built that nice big one out there by Hyder-Burks that would solve the problem,” Osburn said. “You can’t get a shelter big enough to get all the animals out. The only answer is spay and neuter.”
Osburn said the program has treated 5,403 animals in the county since August 2009. Osburn said the organization was founded in 2009 by a group of transplants who wanted to create an affordable way to address the animal population problem.
“We came down here and saw a lot of dogs and cats running around, and, where we came from, every county has a shelter in New York, and there wasn’t any here,” Osburn said. “We checked into it. The mayor was going to give us a little bit of money. The county wasn’t going to help at all. We checked with Putnam County’s budget in 2009, at the old shelter, was over $500,000, and we couldn’t come up with that. ”
Osburn said the program was going to shut down two years ago when volunteers no longer had enough time to keep it active, but Overton resident Beth Cox stepped in to assist the program and keep it going. Osburn said cats and dogs present different issues when they are able to breed unchecked.
“Cats can have three litters a year if they’re really serious about it,” Osburn said. “Of course, the puppies, the litters are bigger, a bigger amount of animals.”
Osburn said the program has stayed mostly unchanged throughout its fifteen years of operation.
“When I used to answer the phone, sometimes I’d bend the county lines a little bit for people that lived outside the county that didn’t have a veterinarian that they could go to,” Osburn said.
Osburn said it is difficult to determine how many stray animals are still in the county, although many people report seeing less stray dogs since SNIP-OC was founded.
