Lori Treat

Shelter director says saving animals worth the work

Lori Treat, director of the SNYP (Spay and Neuter Your Pets) Arkansas Spay/Neuter Clinic and Animal Shelter in Clinton, holds, from left, Mini, Tubby and Madia. Treat founded the nonprofit organization SNYP Arkansas to provide a low-cost spay-and-neuter clinic. The group took over the Van Buren County Animal Shelter when it was in danger of closing because of its operating costs.
Lori Treat, director of the SNYP (Spay and Neuter Your Pets) Arkansas Spay/Neuter Clinic and Animal Shelter in Clinton, holds, from left, Mini, Tubby and Madia. Treat founded the nonprofit organization SNYP Arkansas to provide a low-cost spay-and-neuter clinic. The group took over the Van Buren County Animal Shelter when it was in danger of closing because of its operating costs.

As director of an animal shelter, Lori Treat of Bee Branch is surrounded by dogs and cats every day, but her dream is for the facility to be empty.

Treat is the volunteer director of SNYP Arkansas Spay/Neuter Clinic and Animal Shelter in Clinton, named for the nonprofit organization she founded in 2015. SNYP stands for Spay and Neuter Your Pets. The group took over the Van Buren County Animal Shelter in Clinton when the county contemplated closing the shelter in 2016 because of the cost to run it.

“The county just couldn’t afford it anymore,” Treat said.

County Judge Roger Hooper confirmed that.

“We were considering shutting the shelter down, and she stepped forward and said she would like to try to take it on,” he said. “Lori does a great job; she’s got a group of volunteers.”

The judge said it cost about $50,000 to $75,000 a year to operate the shelter, plus the cost of an officer to pick up the animals. He said Treat’s organization was given an allocation of $15,000, spread over several months.

The shelter is licensed for 60 kennels, and they’re always full, Treat said, adding that many of the animals are sent by transport to northern states, where spay and neuter laws are strict.

“We’ve transported over 200 dogs to out-of-state rescues. We’ve adopted out close to 150 cats and kittens,” she said. “Probably close to 200 of those [animals] were local. We’ve saved close to 600 lives since we took over last year, so it’s worth it. It’s a struggle, but it’s worth it.”

Treat said she’s spent $19,000 of her own money on the shelter to date.

“Fifteen donors give us $20 a month.What we need — we need 100 people to give us $20 a month. … We do fundraisers, and we have benefits,” she said.

Treat has a 32-hour-a-week job as coding manager for Arkansas Surgical Hospital in North Little Rock.

She didn’t start out to be a shelter director or to create a nonprofit, but animals have always been her passion.

Treat, the only girl of seven children, was raised in Bee Branch.

“We had animals growing up, of course. We had dogs; we had horses. We had mules, chickens, cows; we had pigs. At some point and time, we had a little bit of everything,” she said, laughing. “We fed; we groomed; we cared for them.”

Although she liked the farm animals, she had her sights set on something bigger.

“In high school, I wanted to be a marine biologist. I wanted to study killer whales. That’s what I wanted to do,” Treat said.

Treat said her parents couldn’t afford the out-of-state tuition for colleges that offered a marine biology program. Her mother, Virginia, was a cook in the South Side-Bee Branch cafeteria; her father, Ray, was disabled.

Treat went to the Baptist Health Schools of Nursing and Allied Health (now Baptist Health College-Little Rock) and took coding courses and graduated in 1989.

Caring for animals got put on the back burner.

“I fell into human health care. In the back of my mind, I always wanted to do something [with animals],” she said.

In about 2001, she was attending church with a couple of veterinarians. Dr. Terry Fox of Damascus asked Treat if she wanted to help Fox and her husband, Dr. Mark Fox, at Twin Creeks Veterinary Service in Damascus while an employee was on vacation.

“I said, ‘I’ll try anything once.’ The rest, as they say, is history. I fell in love with it,” Treat said. “Because I had the human background, they were saying words I understood; nothing was going over my head. Treatment care for animals is about the same as humans. It all fell into place.”

Treat became a technician for the Foxes and another veterinarian, Dr. Ralph Tester of Clinton.

“In 2015, I finally decided to do what I wanted to do, what I loved, which is the animals,” she said.

SNYP (pronounced Snip) Arkansas was started because Treat was tired of seeing animals suffer as the result of not being spayed or neutered.

“It came down to seeing all these animals that their health was so bad, that if they were spayed or neutered when they were younger, they wouldn’t be facing these cancers,” she said.

One day while Treat and Tester were talking, he commented that Van Buren County needed a low-cost spay-and-neuter clinic. Treat said she should open one.

“He looked at me and said, ‘Why don’t you do that, Lori?’”

She formed the nonprofit organization and used his office for the spay-and-neuter program. When someone couldn’t afford the normal fees, she filled out forms and validated the pet owner’s income. On Fridays, dogs and/or cats weighing 50 pounds or less were spayed or neutered for $50.

Now the animal shelter has a room for the spay-

and-neuter program under the direction of Tester.

The animals have to be current on every vaccination available, too, before they can be adopted.

“They come in here infested with everything,” Treat said.

The shelter is getting by financially.

“It’s a month-to-month thing,” she said. “We get $63 each for dogs that go on transport; it costs about $80 to get a dog vetted. That’s because I work with those vets, or it would be $200.

The stray-animal situation in Van Buren County is severe, Treat said, as it is elsewhere in Arkansas. She’s seen cases she’ll never forget.

Treat said the worst situation was in December, when a woman moved away and left her 10 dogs behind. They were found two weeks later.

“They came in here extremely emaciated, broken bones; there were puppies. It was the most horrible thing I have ever seen in my life,” Treat said. “That’s the worst we’ve gotten in here so far.

“All of those dogs got adopted except one — one didn’t make it. He was too far gone.”

Treat attributes part of the stray-animal problem to the economy.

“People are not able to afford to care for their animals. They’re not able to feed them. We get a lot of animals dumped in the national forest in Van Buren County. The sheriff has to go pick them up. They come in here literally starving, starving — skin and bones. We fatten them up and get them to healing … and spay and neuter them.

“My goal is to not have any animals in here,” she said, although she knows that’s not realistic.

“Right now, we are a licensed 60-kennel shelter. I would love to only have to use 10 kennels in here at any given time. In order for that to happen, spay and neuter has to be implemented, and it has to be followed through with.

“When we send them north, they’re adopted within two days of where they’re going. [The northern states] have intense spay and neuter laws, which Arkansas needs to consider.”

Treat said she is working with a member of the Van Buren County Quorum Court to write a spay-and-neuter ordinance for the county.

“We’re literally just starting [to write],” she said. “This is in the initial stage and will likely undergo several changes before, or even if, it is approved.”

She hopes their efforts will get the county one step closer to that empty shelter.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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