UPPER WEST SIDE, MANHATTAN, NY — During the week, Dr. Andrew Kaplan is a Upper West Side veterinarian who caters to the pets of the rich.
In his personal time, on weekends, this popular vet ventures into some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods to offer free spaying and neutering for both cats and dogs.
It all began the day Kaplan met a mixed breed puppy named Toby on death row in a city animal shelter.
Dr. Kaplan went back to New York City’s Animal Care and Control to advocate for the life of the three-month-old pooch he’d fallen for. Because he’s a vet, they did allow him to adopt the puppy considered too aggressive to place.
“Animals shouldn’t die in shelters because they don’t have homes,” Dr. Kaplan said. “Shelters are killing for space and that is not acceptable.”
Then in 2009, Dr. Kaplan founded the Toby Project named after his beloved buddy, who died last year at the old age of 13.
“The reason I named the project after him is he was almost a casualty of system,” Dr. Kaplan said.
So every weekend for the past six years, The Toby Project mobile clinic truck and a team of surgeons head to under-served neighborhoods with the goal of spaying and neutering dogs and cats for free.
“If you look at the data, the neighborhoods that surrender the most pets are in the lowest-income neighborhoods. If you have less animals reproducing, less animals being killed,” Dr. Kaplan said.
Nilsa Astacio, a dog owner, heard that the vet who started the Toby Project volunteers his services for free on weekends, she was even more thankful and grateful.
“Animals become a part of you. They become a part of your heart,” Astacio told PIX11. “When you put the care of your pet with a vet who cares so much, it’s great.”
To many pet owners in the Bronx, Dr. Kaplan is a hero, but to this humble vet, he is just doing what he was put on earth to do.
“It hurts me to know that animals are dying in shelters because they don’t have homes. If I can do something about it then I am going to try,” Dr. Kaplan said.
To find out more about when the Toby Project mobile clinic might be coming close to your neighborhood, check out their website,Tobyproject.org.
