Dear Editor,
I am a California native, former resident of Gilroy, and former partner in Gilroy Veterinary Hospital. I left California and full-time clinical veterinary practice in 1994.
At that time I recall a very poor “safety net” for injured and stray animals in the city of Gilroy. At that time, some local veterinarians were still “taking call” as at that time our clinic was still providing large animal services (I am unaware whether this is still the case).
I do recall getting calls from the Gilroy Police Department with requests to pick up injured animals in the streets of Gilroy at all times of the day or night, weekdays and weekends, holidays included.
At that time the Santa Clara County Animal Control Officers were so few in number and overworked that they could not respond to an animal emergency in a timely fashion (they were usually on a call in South San Jose or further north) and the Gilroy police officers were simply not equipped or trained to deal with these issues. I can vividly recall driving to pick up injured, frightened dogs from the streets of Gilroy while sympathetic police officers directed traffic around the injured animals.
These animals were cared for to the best of our ability and I believe the City of Gilroy reimbursed a fairly reasonable fee to care for these animals, but even then insufficient for having to wake up at 2am to attend to a seriously injured animal. I even attended a meeting in Morgan Hill about that time (1993-94) with city personnel from both Gilroy and Morgan Hill about how to address the problem of caring for these stray and injured animals.
The main issue at that time was that the county had insufficient funds and expected the cities to pay the county to provide animal control services or provide them on their own. As many things in life, the major stumbling block appeared financial in nature. I agree with the editor, $100,000 seems to be a steep price to pay to analyze a problem that has been going on for years. A real commitment from the community and political leadership is needed to solve this problem.
With best wishes to the residents of Gilroy,
Christopher G. Nelson, D.V.M., M.D. Hillsborough, N.C.
