The volunteers at the Montana Spay/Neuter Task Force are dedicated to helping communities by offering education, low cost spay and neuter services with qualified veterinarians, and the means to make community involvement an ongoing effort. The Task Force has helped reverse the universal acceptance that killing is the only solution to pet over-population.
Their mobile service, S.P.O.T. (Stop Pet Overpopulation Today), was launched by invitation of the Blackfeet Nation at Browning, Montana in November 1996.
This First Annual Blackfeet Pet Care Week featured a free, demonstration spay/neuter clinic using one surgery table in a makeshift space in Pete Berger’s, head of the Blackfeet Animal Care and Control, heated garage.
In 1996 there was no organized animal control in Montana. Blackfeet Country was infamous for its roving bands of dogs, fighting dogs, biting dogs, starving, sick and mangy dogs. There were incidents of children being killed. By May of the following year, the situation had changed. Dogs were no longer running loose in packs. If one did see a dog, it was fed, healthy, and wearing an animal control license tag.
Since that time, at the invitation of local councils, the Montana Spay/Neuter Task Force have provided services to six of the seven Native American nations in Montana and twenty-three communities throughout Montana’s rural towns.
“No Worries for Us”, is a video produced in 1999 by Earth Links and directed by Doolie Brown during the Valley of the Chiefs Healthy Pet Awareness Week and the Northern Cheyenne Pet Care Week. It gives a glimpse inside clinics at Lodge Grass and Lame Deer on the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservations and shows the work of community members and volunteer veterinarians.
The clinics serve both dogs and cats.
The video has been shown to the American Humane Society and on Native American reservations throughout Western North America.
To visit their website click here; Montana Spay/Neuter Task Force