Some private practition understand this, Thomas says—but she wishes more did. All they would have to do is visit. They'd see that shelters and animal control officers are doing the best they can with their different budgets. "I just want veterinarians to get to know the shelters in their communities," she says.

But Thomas is careful not to criticize doctors. She wants them to speak as well of shelters as she speaks of private practitioners. She knows some of them worry that nonprofits bring down prices and steal business from private practices that don't have the luxury of operating on goodwill and donations. But Wayside Waifs offers post-adoption medical services for only 10 days. "We're not here to take business away from them, and we're not here to offer low-cost services to the general public," she says. "We're here to do our best to send veterinarians healthy patients."

The local animal control

Olathe Animal Control is tucked into a municipal complex near the fire station and police department and is a fraction of the size of Wayside Waifs, with five full-time and three part-time employees, and four volunteers. The animal control officers' main job isn't the shelter, either—it's responding to animal control calls. Murray, a former veterinary assistant who has been with Olathe for 10 years and in animal control for 25, does her best with the resources she has. She and her volunteers don't flinch from scrubbing down dirty dogs or treating flea-infested, scabby pets out on the lawn. She would love to provide more diagnostics for the animals—fecal exams, parvovirus tests—but there just isn't money.

A small budget is part of the reason Murray recently visited more than two dozen local veterinarians and invited them to a meeting with city budgeting personnel and the chief of police. It was a Q&A session on bidding for the Olathe Animal Control contract for veterinary services. A local doctor gets the contract, and that doctor gets paid a set amount for various services. Murray didn't necessarily expect the private practitioners to bid for the city's contract, but she did want them to help make her case to increase the budget. She thought the veterinarians might support her quest for better diagnostics and treatment options.

But only the current contractee and one other veterinarian, who was testifying in an animal abuse case at the courthouse next door, showed up. Murray was disappointed. "I wanted more veterinarians to come to the facility to see how hard we're working and help explain to the city that more tests and vaccinations in the shelter are needed," she says. "But they didn't show." Now Murray is considering buying a microscope on eBay and doing fecals herself. In most cases, the city won't pay for them.

The current contractee, Dr. Clint Beggs, owner of Best Care Pet Hospital in Olathe, Kan., has been providing the shelter's medical care for almost 11 years. When he started, he squeezed a friend at a medical supply company for free parvovirus tests, but that didn't last more than a year. He says that the animal control work fills some empty slots in his schedule, but it "won't boost anybody's bank account."

"Some doctors think a municipal contract means money in the bank, but that is never where I was coming from," Dr. Beggs says. He says "it sucks" to euthanize animals that in other circumstances could be treated or rehabilitated, but he still does it because the contract helps him feel like he's really making a difference. "You can help a lot more animals through shelters than you can by giving a discount to the one client who can't pay for their pet's broken leg," he says.