Pets enhance our lives. They amuse us with their antics, shower us with unconditional love, teach us compassion, provide companionship, and offer protection. We, in turn, see to their health needs and keep them from harm. But when we allow them to breed indiscriminately, producing more animals than we can handle, the result spells heartbreak for us and often a death warrant for them. For our community, it means ever-increasing animal control costs and health and safety risks to neighborhoods. The answer, of course, is sterilization — the surest and most humane way to resolve this dilemma.

Yet, when the cost of this surgery is a barrier, pet owners are forced to make difficult choices that too often result in their surrendering or abandoning the offspring of their pets, and often the pets themselves.

C-SNIP removes that barrier by providing the only low-cost spay/neuter clinic in West Michigan open to the public. The clinic provides affordable spay/neuter surgery to the pets of those with limited finances. C-SNIP enables thousands of pet owners to make their pets' reproduction a choice, not an inevitability.

Did you know...?

• Overpopulation is the single greatest killer of dogs and cats in the U.S.
• For every human birth, 15 dogs and 45 cats are also born.
• A female cat can be nursing one litter while pregnant with the next.
• One unspayed female cat, her mate and their offspring, reproducing at a rate of two litters per year, will result in 11,800 felines in just five years.
• About 8 million animals are killed in our shelters every year, primarily because there is no one to care for them.
• A recent study determined that, of the top ten reasons people give for surrendering their pets to shelters, three were related to problems posed by unwanted litters.
• Studies show that a disproportionate number of animals in shelters come from economically-depressed neighborhoods.
• Dog and cat overpopulation harms neighborhoods. In 1974, the National League of Cities' Annual Congress of Cities adopted the following national municipal policy on pet control: "Dog and cat overpopulation in urban areas is now recognized as a threat to health as well as an assault on urban aesthetics, a pollutant, and a safety hazard. It also represents a major city expenditure. Citizens and governments must be made aware of the seriousness of the problem."
• Most companion animal protection groups and shelters spend less than 5% of their budgets on neutering assistance programs.
• In the West Michigan community, numbering over a million people, C-SNIP is the only organization with the sole aim of reducing dog and cat populations through sterilization.

How is C-SNIP different?
C-SNIP is the only non-profit oraganization whose total resources are available to the public in West Michigan.  C-SNIP focuses solely on sterilization and staffs veterinarians for this purpose alone.  The only organization whose total resources are devoted to preventing rather than coping with pet overpopulation.

C-SNIP (funded by donations, fees for services)
• Provides low cost spay/neuter surgery
• Provides educational material about the benefits of sterilization
• Refers clients to other resources for veterinary care, adoption services, pet care advice and animal control regulations
• Monitors relevant legislation and supports legislation that promotes sterilization of animals

The Humane Society (funded by donations, fees for services)
• Shelters surrendered and stray animals, adopts them out or euthanizes them
• Provides a lost and found service
• Advocates legislation protecting ALL animals
• Offers low cost euthanasia
• Educates, by providing responsible animal care and sterilization information, behavioral counseling and pet first aid training

The Animal Shelter (tax supported)
• Enforces animal control legislation
• Shelters stray, surrendered and quarantined animals, adopting or euthanizing those not adopted
• Investigates bite cases
• Responds to animal related complaints
• Picks up stray animals

Vicky's Pet Connection (funded by donations, fees for services)
• Provides foster placement for adoptable cats and dogs
• Facilitates adoption of dogs and cats
• Encourages spay/neuter and provides financial support for the surgery

C-SNIP works with these organizations and several other private rescue groups to help reduce the problems associated with pet overpopulation in our area. C-SNIP's success will be reflected in decreased euthanasia rates, reduced incidents of bite cases, and lower animal control costs.