Karen Slomba went "from football to felines." She left a career promoting concerts and producing sports TV, started volunteering at an animal shelter, and was soon running it. Watching so many kittens arrive with nowhere to go convinced her that prevention was the only real answer. In 2020, when the pandemic cut spay/neuter to a trickle, she and fellow Florida shelter leaders started sending vet teams to each other's shelters. That grew into Slomba Shelter Solutions, which now brings weekend pop-up surgery teams to shelters and clinics in most states.

Karen and host Brianna Lovell Myers talk frankly about veterinary recruitment. Vets hold the cards now, and a job description isn't an ad, so shelters have to market themselves the way adopters meet a FeLV-positive cat: let them fall in love first. They also cover the new wet lab partnership between Slomba and United Spay Alliance. It uses "high quality, high efficiency" framing to bring in private practice vets, so that communities can clear their own backlogs for good.

Karen closes with advice for anyone who wants to work in animal welfare but doesn't think they're qualified: don't talk yourself out of it.

• Why "turning off the faucet" beats mopping up the floor

• How a pandemic workaround became a national spay/neuter relief service

• What vet recruitment really takes now, from salary to four-day weeks

• Why your job description isn't your recruitment ad

• How "high efficiency" framing brings private practice vets on board

• The math on doing five or six surgeries an hour without losing money

• New national funding for spay/neuter from the ASPCA, Bissell, and the Duffield Foundation

• Karen's advice for career changers with a heart for animals

• Slomba Shelter Solutions

• Slomba Shelter Solutions on Facebook

• United Spay Alliance HQHVSN Wet Labs

• United Spay Alliance State Leader Network

• Trap Dat Cat

• Haven on Earth Animal League

• 2026 ASPCA Grants for Shelters and Spay/Neuter Clinics

Dr. Becky Morrow's path into shelter medicine started with a flash drive full of old photos and a memory that still gives her chills: the first time she saw a high-quality, high-volume spay/neuter clinic in action back in 2006. Private practice had never quite fit, and once she saw that clinic run, she was hooked. She went on to found Frankie's Friends Cat Rescue in 2010 in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, after helping care for more than 400 cats rescued from Tiger Ranch, a large-scale hoarding facility — and has since performed tens of thousands of spay/neuter surgeries herself while training hundreds of veterinarians and vet students in the technique.

In this conversation with host Brianna Lovell Myers, Dr. Morrow talks about what actually separates high-quality, high-volume work from "cutting corners" — smaller incisions, faster recovery, and a team-centered model where technicians and assistants are trained just as thoroughly as the vets. She shares the story behind Frankie's Friends' two-day CE training program, a four-day, 325-surgery field clinic in Puerto Rico that trained 40 local team members alongside the surgeries themselves, and a rare cardiac condition in young cats she's now studying with a cardiologist and pathologist simply because her clinic sees enough volume to notice the pattern. She also makes the case that impact doesn't require going all-in: general practitioners who add just a handful of extra spay/neuter surgeries to their weekly schedule can meaningfully move the needle on community cat overpopulation, since roughly 80% of kittens entering shelters trace back to that population.

• How a single 2006 clinic visit reshaped Dr. Morrow's entire career path into shelter medicine

• The real difference between high-volume spay/neuter and "cutting corners" — and why her outcomes often beat general practice

• Inside the two-day Frankie's Friends CE training model, including its team-centered, not vet-centered, approach

• The story of a 325-surgery, four-day field clinic in Puerto Rico that trained 40 local veterinary team members

• Why Pennsylvania and Maine's licensing reciprocity rules make them easier states for visiting vets to train and practice in

• A rare cardiac condition in young cats that Dr. Morrow is now researching, discovered only because of her clinic's surgical volume

• Why community practices don't need to go high-volume to make an impact — and what "just add five" surgeries a week can do

• Dr. Morrow's "Just Add Five" presentation from the 2025 United Spay Alliance Conference, available online for anyone who wants the full talk

• Dr. Morrow's own path to developing her surgical technique largely self-taught, with mentorship from Dr. Donna Hughes

• Frankie's Friends Humane: https://www.frankies-friends.org/

• United Spay Alliance: https://unitedspayalliance.org/

Angela Chapman, Temma Martin, and Brandi Winkleman each run a spay/neuter clinic they built from nothing — and each got there a different way. For Angela, it was a for-sale sign on a building in Lebanon, Tennessee, that grew into New Leash on Life's JOY Clinic. For Temma, it was buying a mid-century building in Millcreek, Utah, on a leap of faith that became Operation Pawpulation. For Brandi, it was a friend calmly describing the day's euthanasia list — a moment that eventually turned into A HOPE, Inc., built on 25 acres cleared by hand in Milton, Florida. Different starting points, same conclusion: adoption alone couldn't solve the overpopulation problem, and prevention had to come first.

This replay of a live panel from the 2025 United Spay Alliance conference follows all three through the real work of getting a clinic open and keeping it running — fundraising that ranged from major donors to donation cans at gas stations, pricing services so they stay accessible without draining the budget, and the licensing, staffing, and compliance realities that never make it into the mission statement. Between an established shelter-based program, a startup still building out its hours, and a clinic nearly a decade in the making, the panel offers three working models for anyone trying to figure out which one fits their own community.

• The "aha moments" that pushed each panelist to leave the sidelines and start a clinic

• Why prevention — not adoption — has to be the centerpiece of the strategy

• Real numbers: what each clinic charges for dogs, cats, and TNR/community cat surgeries

• Creative, low-cost fundraising ideas, including how $700 in donation-can change kept a MASH clinic running

• The case for program-based budgeting so your board can see which programs strain the organization financially

• Mobile vs. MASH vs. brick-and-mortar: how to figure out which delivery model actually fits your community

• The behind-the-scenes business realities of opening a clinic — Department of Agriculture registration, OSHA compliance, insurance, and staffing a team that isn't a vet office, a TNR group, or a shelter

• Why storytelling and messaging (not just line-item asks) drive donations

• Honest talk about how many technicians and support staff each clinic runs per veterinarian

• A reminder that you are not alone — and why finding your own support network matters as much as any spreadsheet

• New Leash on Life & The JOY Clinic: newleashonline.org

• Operation Pawpulation: operationpawpulation.org

• A HOPE, Inc. & Snip Happens Clinic: ahopemilton.com

• United Spay Alliance: unitedspayalliance.org