Espanola Humane

Española Humane currently works with residents in Rio Arriba County, northern Santa Fe County, and the pueblos of Ohkay Owingeh, San Ildefonso and Santa Clara. Our primary goal is to reduce the number of unwanted dogs and cats through free spay/ neuter surgeries and vaccinations. Put simply, too many unwanted animals are born and too few are adopted. Underpinning the goal are two measurable strategies:

1. Complete an average of 6,500 free spay/neuter surgeries per year in underserved areas that are located within 20 miles of the shelter; and
2. Reduce the intake of unwanted animals at the shelter by 70 percent over the next five years.

Our “Pet Amigos” outreach program helps to reduce the number of unwanted animals by encouraging free spay/neuter surgeries. To reach the “low hanging fruit” (pet owners already motived but with insufficient resources), we will informally partner with churches, senior centers and youth groups to help spread the word about free spay/neuter surgeries. The local Sonic Drive-Ins and Family Dollar discount stores will stuff bags with our spay/neuter leaflets.

For the “higher-hanging fruit,” we will deploy our Pet Amigos team. The bilingual team goes door-to-door in targeted neighborhoods, shaking hands and meeting people, providing advice on animal humane issues, and encouraging residents to take advantage of our offer to alter and vaccinate their pets for free. The team has initially targeted the City of Española, which accounts for the highest number of surrenders at the shelter.

Most of our management team has been working together for years. Bridget Lindquist joined Española Humane in 2005 and inherited an overwhelmed shelter staff in an aging facility with a live release rate of 56 percent. Bridget recruited highly skilled talent and “incentivized” the staff to increase adoptions and spay/neuter. Española Humane continued to be an open-admissions shelter, refusing to turn away any animal, but these days our live release rate is 80 percent.

Dr. Tom has worked with our organization for seven years and was the mobile van surgeon for a neighboring shelter before that. Dr. Tom has a passion for low-cost, high-quality, large volume clinics and has visited Humane Alliance in North Carolina to learn their techniques. He has worked as a volunteer surgeon with the HSUS RAVS team on remote Native American lands in Arizona as well as with World Vets doing free rural clinics in Nicaragua and Peru.

Gretchen Yost, DVM has been with our organization since 2007 and was medical director until 2012. Dr. Gretchen is also a spay/neuter surgeon who has done volunteer work with World Vets in Nicaragua. As a former electrical engineer, she has a keen interest in data interpretation and statistical reporting. She took the lead role in securing and completing all required follow-up reporting for our major spay/neuter grant applications.

Our Director of Operations, Karina Exell, came to us from PAWS Chicago where she developed a community outreach program that accomplished 773 spay/neuter surgeries in the first year. Karina has also directed the operations of two veterinary hospitals, managing teams as large as 29 staff and seven veterinarians. Her focus at Española Humane is improving the accessibility of spay/neuter services.

We have made great progress—from about 2,800 annual surgeries a few years ago to over 4,603 in 2021. In 2022, we hope to expand Pet Amigos into further communities within our service area. Eventually and ideally, as our shelter's intake decreases due to our success in addressing the animal overpopulation problem, we will need to spend less money sheltering animals. Initially, this has not happened and will not happen for a time, as we spend more per intake by treating more illness and giving more time for adoption. However, over years of decreasing intake we expect that there will be some savings, and these savings will contribute to our ability to continue offering free sterilizations.