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San Antonio city leaders announced the opening of the new spay and neuter clinic in Denver Heights on the city’s East Side on Friday.
It’s the second new Animal Care Services (ACS) spay and neuter clinic in the past two months; city leaders held a ribbon-cutting for the new West Side clinic in April. Veterinarians are estimated to perform between 7,000 and 8,000 surgeries at the two clinics per year.
ACS Director Jonathan Gary said it was a big deal that the city had now opened these two clinics.
“There's not very municipal governments that fund and operate two — not only one — but two community spay and neuter clinics, it's very rare that you see that in communities,” he said. “And so San Antonio should be extremely proud that we were able to do that. And so this is definitely a landmark day for our department and our city.”
The two new clinics are part of an effort to increase annual ACS pet sterilizations to 40,000 and rein in the loose and stray pet problem across the city.
Gary said ACS wants to make spay and neuter surgeries as accessible as possible for San Antonio residents.
“A lot of free surgeries are going to be done,” he said. “We'll have some low-cost options as well, but our intent is to try to provide as many free ones as we possibly can to those in our community who need it the most.”
District 2 Councilmember Jalen McKee-Rodriguez is responsible for first bringing up the idea of two new spay and neuter clinics in the parts of town with the biggest stray animal problems.
“So this is huge, and again, we still have so much more work to do and so much more to prove,” McKee-Rodriguez said. “But today is a celebration of a milestone that is going to ensure that communities like mine, that have been neglected for so long, that we have access to the tools and resources that are going to address some of our greatest, most complex challenges.”
The Denver Heights clinic is located at 1608 S. New Braunfels Avenue Suite 101.
