Northwest Denver
Thursday, February 13, 1992
by: R. W. Meddies
We’ve all got our pet causes, even Jeff Young.
But in Jeff’s case, his pet cause is pets. Jeff is the driving force behind Planned Pethood Plus, a statewide educational advocacy program that works i toward decreasing the number of animals euthanized each year; a number that exceeds 80,000 annually in Colorado and tops the 20,000,000 mark nationally.
That’s 65,000 animals that are put to death each day. That’s rhetoric that exacerbates the problem Jeff is working toward solving.
And according to Jeff, those numbers are really just the tip of the iceberg. “There are tons of them out there dying that nobody knows about,” says Jeff, reffering to the countless number of animals that are abandoned each year – left to fend for themselves.
The mind set behind dumping an animal is often that the animal has a better chance to make it that way than if they are taken to an animal shelter where they
will almost certainly be euthanized, but while that kind of thinking may solve the owner’s conscience, it is unrealistic and unfair to the animal.
“Everyone thinks cats do so great out on their own outside, but the truth is most of them just die before anybody knows about it.” Jeff explained.
But Jeff does more than simply rail against the inequity of it all, he is an honest-to-God, dyed in the wood activist. For starters, Jeff and Mark
Chamberlin, both veterinarians at Planned Pethood Plus, offer the lowest priced spay and neutering services in the area, but they don’t stop there.
“We offer a rebate on all pregnant cats we spay,” Jeff said. Most vets charge extra if your feline happens to be in a family way when you opt to have it spayed but as Jeff explains, “It’s not any harder to spay a pregnant cat and besides, I like doing that a lot better than I like killing them”
to put in 16 hour days “finding” dogs and cats in such exotic locations as Walsenburg, Colorado City and the Western Slope. That is known as going the extra mile and I, for one, was more than a little impressed by this commitment to a belief.
But besides that very real dedication, Jeff realizes there are a number of different ways and different levels by which you can reach people and get a message across and while Jeff takes his work very seriously.
