Why Can't the Vet Just Do It for Free?

It sounds like a fair question.

A rescue has a dog that needs to be neutered.

A community cat needs to be spayed.

Everybody agrees that preventing unwanted litters is a good thing.

The veterinarian loves animals.

So...

Why can't the vet just do it for free?

Because the veterinarian isn't performing a free surgery.

The veterinarian would be paying for the surgery.

And those are two very different things.

Let's open the door to the operating room.

Before an animal ever gets onto a surgical table, a veterinary clinic has already invested in the building, equipment and people necessary to put that table there.

Then comes the actual procedure.

There are trained veterinary professionals involved. Anesthesia and medications. Sterile instruments and surgical supplies. Monitoring equipment. Cleaning and sterilization. Recovery space. Medical records. Follow-up instructions.

Some supplies are used once and discarded.

Equipment has to be purchased, maintained and eventually replaced.

Employees have to be paid.

The lights have to stay on.

None of those expenses disappear because the animal belongs to a rescue or nonprofit organization.

Free to the rescue doesn't mean free to the clinic.

Someone always pays.

“But veterinarians love animals.”

Of course they do.

That's probably one of the reasons many of them entered the profession.

But loving animals doesn't make anesthesia free.

It doesn't replace surgical instruments.

And it doesn't cover the expenses involved in operating a veterinary hospital.

We don't expect a grocery store to donate all of its pet food because hungry animals need to eat.

We don't expect a construction company to build an animal shelter for free because homeless animals need somewhere to live.

Yet sometimes there is an expectation that veterinary professionals should donate their skills simply because the patient has four legs.

That's a strange burden to place on the very people whose skills we desperately need.

And the people inside that clinic have bills, too.

A veterinary hospital isn't just a veterinarian and an operating table.

There are veterinary technicians and assistants. Receptionists answering phones and scheduling appointments. Kennel and animal-care staff. Practice managers. People cleaning surgical areas, preparing instruments, monitoring animals during recovery and keeping the entire operation moving.

They aren't simply “overhead.”

They're people.

They have mortgages and rent.

Car payments.

Electric bills.

Groceries.

Childcare.

Health insurance.

Families.

They go to work for the same basic reason most of us do: because their paycheck supports a life outside the building.

Choosing a career that helps animals doesn't somehow make someone's own financial responsibilities disappear.

Think about your own job.

If someone told you, “This is for a really good cause. Would you work today without being paid?” maybe you'd volunteer because you believed in that cause.

But what if they asked again tomorrow?

And next week?

And then ten other organizations asked?

At some point, volunteering has quietly turned into an expectation.

Now multiply one surgery.

One rescue may need help with one dog today.

Another has six cats.

A community cat group may be trying to sterilize an entire colony.

A shelter may have animals arriving every day.

From each organization's perspective, the request may be completely reasonable.

But the veterinary clinic is seeing all of those requests.

There simply isn't an unlimited supply of free veterinary medicine.

And there shouldn't have to be.

So maybe we're asking the wrong question.

Instead of:

“Why can't the veterinarian do it for free?”

What if we asked:

“How do we make sure the veterinarian gets paid?”

Now we're getting somewhere.

Rescues and shelters are trying to make limited funds cover food, housing, medical care, supplies and everything else required to care for their animals.

Veterinary clinics have businesses to operate and employees to support.

The answer shouldn't require either one to shoulder the entire burden.

We need another source of funding.

That's where PennyFix comes in.

PennyFix raises money and awards funds to nonprofit organizations so they can pay the full cost of spay/neuter surgeries and vaccinations for dogs and cats.

The nonprofit gets help.

The animal gets veterinary care.

And the veterinary clinic gets paid.

“But veterinarians DO donate services.”

They absolutely do.

Probably far more often than most of us will ever know.

A veterinarian may quietly reduce a bill for a rescue that is struggling.

A clinic might squeeze an extra animal into an already packed surgery schedule.

Someone may donate an exam, a vaccine, medication, supplies or part of a procedure.

A veterinary professional may volunteer at a clinic or community event on a day they could have spent somewhere else.

And most of the time, there isn't a Facebook post about it.

There isn't a press release.

There isn't a sign hanging in the clinic window announcing everything they've donated.

They just help.

But there's an important distinction.

They choose when they can help, how they can help and how much they can afford to give.

That's what makes it generosity.

A veterinary clinic knows its finances, its staffing, its schedule and what it can absorb. Those decisions belong to the people running that clinic.

When they choose to give, we should appreciate it.

We shouldn't expect it.

Right now, you are helping us pay those bills.

At this point in PennyFix's journey, our work is funded entirely through donations.

Every person and business that gives to PennyFix helps make our grants possible.

A $5 donation joins a $20 donation. That joins a $100 donation. Those dollars eventually leave PennyFix as grant funding and become something tangible inside a veterinary clinic:

A spay.

A neuter.

A vaccination.

Care for an animal that a nonprofit organization otherwise would have had to find another way to fund.

We are tremendously grateful for those donations.

But they were never the entire plan.

We haven't forgotten the penny.

The original idea behind PennyFix was wonderfully simple:

Add one penny to every can of dog and cat food sold in the United States.

One penny.

Most people wouldn't give a single penny on a purchase a second thought.

But imagine those pennies collected across the enormous number of cans of dog and cat food sold throughout the country.

That was the idea.

Not asking a few people to give a lot.

Asking a lot of people to give almost nothing.

Those pennies could fund grants to nonprofit organizations across the country, allowing them to pay in full for spay/neuter surgeries and vaccinations.

And that remains our goal.

We need the pet food companies at the table.

PennyFix has not forgotten the reason we were created.

We want pet food companies to join us.

Imagine purchasing a can of dog food for $2.00 and paying $2.01 instead.

That extra penny isn't much to one person.

But put enough pennies together and suddenly they aren't pennies anymore.

They're veterinary bills that can be paid.

They're grants that can be awarded.

They're nonprofit organizations that can schedule surgeries knowing they have funding behind them.

And they're veterinary clinics being asked for an appointment rather than a donation.

“We need this animal spayed. And yes, we can pay the bill.”

That's where we want to go.

Until we get there, individual and business donations are what allow PennyFix to continue awarding grants, and we need that support.

But we're still pursuing the bigger idea.

Because solving a problem this large shouldn't require us to continually ask the same relatively small group of animal lovers, rescue organizations and veterinary professionals to carry it.

What if instead, we spread the responsibility so widely that almost no one felt it?

One can.

One cent.

Millions of tiny contributions working together.

Veterinarians can keep doing what they do best.

Nonprofit organizations can keep helping the animals that need them.

And PennyFix can help connect the funding to the surgeries.

Maybe the question was never:

“Why can't the vet just do it for free?”

Maybe the better question is:

“Why haven't we figured out how to pay for it?”

We have an idea.

One penny at a time.