On May 29, the Animal Resource Foundation will celebrate the 10th anniversary of opening our Spay and Neuter Clinic in the White Marsh Shopping Center in Gloucester.

Or perhaps it is more accurate to call it our 10th birthday—or better yet, our 10th “unbirthday.” Because in those 10 years we have spayed and neutered just under 36,000 dogs and cats, preventing the “unbirthdays” of literally hundreds of thousands of unwanted puppies and kittens. What has that meant to our communities?

—Because fewer unwanted animals are born, fewer flood our local shelters.

—Because fewer animals need to come into our shelters, more animals leave alive, because there are more resources to help those animals medically and behaviorally so they are adoptable.  

—With fewer unwanted animals being born, fewer are abandoned to starve, become sick, or be hit on the roads. Fewer dog packs threaten livestock. Fewer animals are unvaccinated and living i...