Happy New Year!

We look forward in the coming year to continuing the impressive growth of our spay/neuter program. There appears to be growing familiarity with our phone number that puts you in touch with the system: 209-732-6194. We have provided data in the past to demonstrate the use of vouchers, but again in two recent months, October and November we gave out, respectively, 33 and 45 vouchers! Imagine the unwanted pets who were saved from possible neglect and death.

During the early months of 2017, our Board plans to explore the feasibility of expanding our service area beyond the five communities we currently serve: Coulterville, Lake Don Pedro, Big Oak Flat, Greeley Hill, and Groveland. There are many factors involved. Will we need to expand our volunteer staff in order to handle the increased load of vouchers? Can the veterinarians in the region accommodate the increased demand for spay/neuter services? How do we select the new communities to serve? How do we let the public know about the new service? We will be soliciting your views about these questions in the coming months.

Another topic we have discussed in the past year is the possibility of a “food pantry” for distributing dog and cat food to our citizens who are unable to provide proper nourishment for their dogs and cats. Right now, we do not have the volunteers we would need to carry out this type of operation. Perhaps we’ll try to find a community that has tried and succeeded in running a food pantry and see just what the challenges are. Again, we will try to survey the public to see how they might assist in undertaking this service.

As usual, thanks for your support of Northside Pet Connection.

More information can be found on our website: npconnections.org. 

Article by Tom Grave, NPC President