Updated 1:02 p.m. January, 19, 2011

By James Rincon

Pflag Reporter

A familiar face to animal advocacy in Pflugerville has recruited a ringer to help the city get a handle on its stray pet population.

Pflugerville resident Lynn Vaughan has volunteered at the Pflugerville animal shelter for five years and is a founding member of the local animal advocacy group the Pfurry Pfriends.

She has appealed to Austin-based EmanciPet mobile clinic to come help target a major cause behind the over-crowding and euthanasia of local animals.

“I just thought, ‘Why are so many animals in here?’” Vaughan said. “I came to realize that probably a majority of the animals that are at the shelter aren’t spayed or neutered.”

Late last year Vaughan said the shelter took in a chocolate Labrador retriever that was picked up on the streets. Days after the dog became a ward of the shelter, it gave the city 12 more mouths to feed.

“The chocolate lab had 12 puppies right after it came to the shelter,” Vaughan said.

Pflugerville police animal control supervisor Lt. Bill Anderson said this situation is not uncommon.

“We end up with kittens or puppies we have to work on getting adopted out,” Anderson said.

“People are probably not aware that just one cat and its offspring in just seven years can produce up to 420,000 [cats] over that seven-year span.”

EmanciPet’s mission is to humanely reduce the homeless and unwanted pet population by providing high-quality, high-volume, low-cost spay or neuter, Outreach Director Asha Thune said.

“The mobile clinic right now travels six days a week, both inside Austin and just outside of Austin as well. We’re able to provide the same type of services on that mobile vehicle as we are here at the stationary clinic,” Thune said. “Because spay/neuter is the core of EmanciPet’s mission, we’re able to do a large volume, which means we’re able to keep some costs down, but most importantly we fundraise to be able to offer such low prices to the community.”

The clinic schedules days of free and reduced-price medical services with prices averaging about one fourth of traditional veterinary care.

Anderson said these medical services provide more than just crowd control.

“Spaying and neutering is very valuable for a couple reasons. One: it controls the population of unplanned animals, as Bob Barker used to always say. Number two is it helps with your animal’s health,” he said.

Spaying and neutering prevents urinary and mammary cancer as well as life threatening uterus infection, Anderson said.

EmanciPet’s mobile clinic will make its first-ever stop in Pflugerville on Feb. 2 at Dog Boy’s Dog Ranch, located at 2615 Crystal Bend Drive. An appointment is necessary to get an animal spayed or neutered. The drop off time is 8-8:30 a.m. and pickup is from 5-5:30 pm.

“If we are going out to a location it is important that that location be full so that we’re able to really get the most out of what we do best, which is that high-volume, high-quality spay/neuter. So it’s definitely better for the community…to have a full clinic,” Thune said.

In Vaughan’s time with the animal shelter she has advocated population control to families adopting animals, but said she is sometimes met with skepticism about how the procedure affects a dog’s personality. Thune said she has also heard these concerns, but said they seem unfounded to this point.

“There are a lot of misconceptions about spay/neuter in general. A common one is that it’s going to change their animal, and we see time and time again with that fear and they go home and say, if anything it made my animal a better companion because it didn’t have the same tendency to stray, for example,” Thune said. “It is just a myth that’s out there, and it’s hard to disprove in any sort of scientific manner, but it is a pretty common myth.”