South Shore animals will be able to receive better care thanks to donors. Here's where

SCITUATE – Hundreds of animals needing homes pass through the doors of Scituate Animal Shelter each year, many of them needing veterinary care before they can be adopted out.

The shelter’s in-house veterinarian, Julia Bentley, helps speed that process along. But there’s only so much she can do on site, meaning animals must go out for things like spay or neuters and dental care.

But that is now changing.

Staff at the shelter recently celebrated the completion of a surgical suite within the shelter on route 3A in Scituate.

The project, which cost about $200,000, was funded with donations from Fox Rock Foundation, the family foundation of Rob and Karen Hale, as well as the Shirley S. Windsor Charitable Trust, Cohasset residents Romalda and Peter Blanchard and Hingham residents Kelly and John Carroll.

Lisey Good, the shelter’s communications coordinator, said the new suite will save money, time and resources by allowing Bentley to perform in-house sonograms, spay and neuter operations and other common surgeries, such as eye enucleations, mass removals and dental procedures.

“We currently have to find the cheapest and quickest place to fix them up, and it’s often far away and they may not be able to get an appointment for weeks,” she said. “If it’s as simple as a mass removal or dental procedure, they’d be ready for adopting and could be in someone’s home, but they’re in our shelter.”

Good said the shelter averages about 550 animal adoptions each year, and 60 to 70 percent are not spayed or neutered when they arrive. That means the surgical suite will allow for at least 350 spay or neuter surgeries alone annually.

In addition to cost savings and quicker surgeries, in-house procedures mean animals will be spared the stress of additional travel.

Good said one volunteer, Sandra Morse, of Cohasset, often takes dogs, cats and rabbits for procedures as far away as Brockton, Grafton or Brookfield, which exhausts and stresses the already-anxious animals.

“This is simply an enormous step for Scituate Animal Shelter,” Good said.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Scituate Animal Shelter opens surgical suite to speed up adoptions