Bernalillo to host Week for the Animals Celebration
Fiesta to offer spay, neuter, other services
For the first time in its 17-year history, New Mexico’s annual Week for the Animals Celebration Fiesta is going to be in Bernalillo.
Started in an effort to make people think about the welfare of animals, the fiesta has been held in past years in Santa Fe and Las Vegas.
But this year’s event — which will include a mobile surgical van offering spay and neuter services, a vaccination and microchip clinic and a blessing of the animals — will take place from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday at Bernalillo’s Rotary Park Pavilion, 300 Rotary Park Road.
“We’ve tried to do something every year to create awareness of our wonderful animals in New Mexico,” said Jane Carson, president of the Pecos People for Animal Welfare Society, PAWS, the nonprofit organization that sponsors the fiesta. “Now, we are trying to focus on spay and neuter because there are not enough homes for these animals. So many have to be put down.”
Carson said all the spay and neuter slots have been reserved for this year’s fiesta, but that low-cost vaccination and microchip services are still available on a first come, first served basis.
Other fiesta features include presentations about the humane treatment of animals, games, drawings for pet-related prizes, a food truck, pet adoptions, face painting and pet photography.
The blessing of the animals, in English and Spanish, courtesy of Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church in Bernalillo, will be at 3:30 p.m.
Carson, who lives near Santa Fe, has six dogs, a cat and two horses. All are adopted except for one of the horses. She said hundreds of animals have been present at fiestas in the past.
“We had about 500 animals at the
Santa Fe plaza one year,” she said. “Besides dogs and cats, we’ve had donkeys, rabbits, goats, everything show up.”
Because so many different kinds of animals attend the fiesta, Carson said it is important to keep animals safe and secure — on a leash, bridle or halter, in cages and pet carriers.
“In the past, because we didn’t know what to expect, we had some run-ins,” she said.
PAWS is located in the San Miguel County town of Pecos and concentrates its education efforts and spay and neuter services in San Miguel County. But Carson said the problem of too many animals and too few homes for them is statewide.
“My dream is to have two spay-neuter vans in every quadrant of the state,” she said.
But this year, Bernalillo is front and center for the animals week fiesta.
Bernalillo’s Roxanne Smyth, who has been involved with New Mexico’s Week for the Animals since its start, said she was talking to Carson about the extreme need for spay-neuter services in Bernalillo and that led to scheduling the fiesta in the town.
“We have a very large community of feral cats in Bernalillo,” Smyth said. “If they could be caught, neutered and released that would be great. And when I walk my dog, I see a lot of dogs that are not fixed.”
Smyth has three dogs, which she describes as small, medium and large. She also has two cats, an Amazon parrot, fighting fish in aquariums and koi fish in a pond.
She said one part of Sunday’s event she is especially pleased about is a presentation aimed at teaching kids how to take care of pets.
“They’ll learn things like it’s not good to have your dog chained,” she said. “And we’ll have crayon events where we will ask participants to draw how to feel about a puppy or draw what a cat needs. Maybe they’ll draw a heart.”