A nonprofit board has decided to close a spay/neuter clinic that served the region for nearly two decades after efforts to secure a veterinarian partner failed.
Spay Today shut down its surgical facility May 31, Gayle Bailey, a member of the board of directors, said. Although the low-cost, high-volume clinic had sterilized nearly 78,000 animals in its 18 years of operation, there was no easy fix for retaining a veterinarian.
“Of course we can’t pay staff to be there with no veterinarian,” said Bailey, who has served as treasurer of the board for eight years. “I think because of past searches and problems that we had in securing veterinarians, we just realized that this was an impossibility.
“We are heartbroken over the closure of the clinic,” she said. “We are all so sad today.”
Spay Today, which opened in 2006, had five full-time staff members and one part-time technician. Veterinary surgeon Krystel Riggione, the only vet on staff, ended her tenure on May 30 after a little more than two years.
The clinic, which spayed or neutered an average of 25 animals a day, will be forced to cancel appointments that had been booked later in the summer. Bailey said the closure will have effects beyond Pitt County because Spay Today served animal rescue groups in several counties in the region, including Lenoir, Beaufort and Carteret.
Still, Spay Today’s largest client has been the county’s animal shelter, located about 50 feet away from the clinic’s front door. Since 2010, when the county’s Board of Commissioners adopted an ordinance requiring all animals adopted from the shelter to be spayed or neutered, Pitt County Animal Services has brought as many as 1,000 animals a year to Spay Today for surgery. In addition, the clinic’s veterinarian has traditionally served as a part-time vet for the shelter, providing medical treatment for animals being housed there temporarily.
Pitt County Animal Services Director Chad Singleton said Friday that the shelter, which is required by law to employ a veterinarian, has an agreement with a vet to provide welfare checks and other services.
“There will be no disruption in that service to the animals and the medical protocol,” he said. “Our only complication at this point is the surgery.”
While some local veterinarians have agreed to provide spay/neuter surgeries for PCAS at a discounted rate, Singleton said, the county will incur a higher cost due to time and fuel required to transport animals to other veterinary practices. For now, Singleton said, PCAS has no plans to increase its animal adoption fees.
He said it will be challenging for the county to maintain its TNR (Trap, Neuter, Release) program targeting feral cat colonies for sterilization. Through the program, Animal Services has captured as many as 300 feral cats a year, which were altered at Spay Today and then returned to their colonies.
“When you look at the number of surgeries that Spay Today has been performing, it would certainly overwhelm the veterinarians that are here,” Singleton said, adding that some veterinary practices do not work with feral cats.
He is hopeful that the county will not have to return to its former system in which people adopting pets from the shelter were given a spay/neuter voucher rather than taking home a pet that has already been altered.
“A lot of shelters, you adopt a dog, they don’t provide spay/neuter surgery,” he said. “In Pitt County, every animal, cat, dog, ferret, we’re going to make sure it’s not reproducing when it goes back out. Our system is working because we’re seeing less animals come into the shelter.”
Spay Today, which performed about 2,000 sterilizations in its first four years of operation, later increased its volume to as many as 6,000 surgeries a year. The clinic performed 1,660 surgeries in the first four months of 2024, averaging about 100 animals a week.
Despite its success in preventing overpopulation of cats and dogs, Spay Today has struggled to maintain staffing. In 2019, the clinic was days away from having to close its doors due to hiring challenges. In 2022, it had to suspend surgeries after the departure of veterinarian John Ellington.
According to a study by Mars Veterinary Health, the world’s largest provider of veterinary care and employer of veterinary professionals, nearly 2,000 veterinarians are retiring each year, while about three dozen veterinary schools across the country produce about 3,200 vets annually. Still, with demand created by an increasing number of pet owners, a shortage of nearly 15,000 veterinarians is expected over the next decade.
“Finding veterinarians in North Carolina as a whole is difficult,” Singleton said, “and finding somebody who can do 30 or 35 surgeries in a day is even more difficult.”
Bailey said that performing multiple spay/neuter surgeries a day is physically stressful work, especially in a clinic with only one veterinarian. To fill the most recent veterinary vacancy, Spay Today’s board considered trying to divide the work among multiple vets who would work a day or so a week. But Bailey said such a schedule was not likely to achieve the volume of surgeries needed to keep the clinic going.
With its future uncertain, Spay Today canceled a fundraiser scheduled in April and refunded money to people who had bought tickets.
“We just didn’t feel like it was right to take their money under the premise of Spay Today doing low-cost spay/neuters,” Bailey said. “If we no longer can do surgeries, our mission has to change.”
What the nonprofit organization’s new mission will be has not yet been decided.
“What we’re hoping is that we can come together as a group after we’ve taken care of the business and the logistics of closing down and come up with an idea of how we might be able to put some sort of voucher program in place,” Bailey said, adding that she would like to see funding for sterilization of feral cats and to assist low-income pet owners. “We really hope we can come up with a new way Spay Today can be helpful in the community with spay/neuters.”
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