Spaying and Neutering should be free.

Today we took our little Hubbles (a yorkipoo) and got him neutered at a low-cost spay/neuter clinic near Fort Lupton. There are other alternatives all over Colorado for this.

I think it's funny that we live in such a strange county. The western side of Boulder county has Boulder, where some people will pay an arm and a leg to have their special pet pampered and fixed in comfort. Go east and cross into Weld county, though, and you see all these people taking animals in to be fixed in an RV trailer in a dusty parking lot.

Animals have all sorts of owners. I'm sure some of the pets that are fixed in the trailer have wonderful lives--like our Hubbles, for instance. In fact, none of the other pets brought into the low-cost clinic looked uncared for. Maybe that's the whole point: good owners will take their pets in to be fixed, whether they take them to the Taj Mahal or the RV trailer. It's the other pet owners we need to worry about.

If aliens did an anthropological study of U.S. culture, I'll bet they'd be pretty shocked at how inconsistent we are towards our pets. Some live like royalty. Others are abused and neglected.

Somehow, something like this should be a free service--and it almost is. I only wish that some of the money from those that choose to spend a thousand on their pampered pet could be redistributed to the less fortunate pets in our society--not to the owners, just to the pets.

[Note: we were a bit nervous about the low-cost alternative we opted for. However, we are quite impressed so far with their service. One nice thing is that, to keep costs down, you don't have to have your pet stay with them overnight. You have to take them in early in the morning and pick them up in the late afternoon. It's nice to have Hubbles here at home and comfortable as his groginess is wearing off.]