The rise of the middle and upper classes in various Latin American nations, like Costa Rica, is translating into positive news for pets.

Economic prosperity means that business is booming for the pet food and supplies industry. Upscale pet hotels and grooming spas for dogs may have once been dismissed as staples of the excesses of Western industrialized nations, but they are now cropping up in the suburbs of the Central Valley. There is no doubt that the pet boom has arrived in Costa Rica and it is bound to keep growing.

There is one difference between the pet boom in Costa Rica when compared to other countries like Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. While the pet boom in those countries is conforming to patterns of consumption and disposable income, pet culture in Costa Rica has been significantly shaped by the hard work of Christine Crawford and the McKee Project.

Pet culture in Costa Rica, and particularly in San Jose, was radically different at the time Christine Crawford arrived in our country. Christine’s impression of the quality of life for dogs in San Jose was recently recounted in a Bark magazine article by veteran journalist Twig Mowatt, whose work has also appeared on the pages of The New York Times.

Christine was taken aback by the reprehensible living conditions of dogs in San Jose. The sight of pregnant and skeletal stray dogs looking for food in trash heaps and generally fighting to survive alongside indifferent Ticos was too much for Christine to assimilate. Her kind heart prompted her to carry dog food with her when she left the house, something that undoubtedly made her very popular among the army of zaguates roaming the streets of our capital city.

Eventually Christine sought the assistance of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and she was advised that the best course of action to take was a sterilization campaign. She found a handful of veterinarians who would help her in her immediate quest to spay and neuter dogs in order to improve their quality of life. But even then Christine faced another obstacle: the sterilization procedures practiced among Tico vets at the time were nothing like the simple outpatient procedure that is so common these days.

The McKee Project

Christine’s animal welfare vision is named after Mary Ann McKee, whom Christine describes as her second mother. It there is one thing that Tico pet owners can thank the McKee Project for is the modernization and advocacy of the spay and neuter industry in Costa Rica.

The McKee Project enlisted Tico vets who traveled to the United States and learned the modern pet sterilization procedures that are now practiced in our country. Those techniques have been improved upon and are now the most advanced in the world. The efficiency of the McKee Project sterilization techniques starts with the reduced size of the incision and the short time that the procedure takes; about 10 minutes. The McKee Project does away with the need of expensive anesthesia equipment -an injection is all that is needed. This streamlined operation means that McKee Project vets are not bound to a single clinic; they are rather mobile and can travel to remote areas, set up a tent, and begin performing spaying and neutering surgeries with ease.

Thanks to the McKee Project, Costa Rica is now a destination for veterinarians from Latin American and Caribbean nations who come to our country to learn the McKee Advanced Spay and Neuter Protocol. Since the McKee Project is a charitable organization, the cost per training session is quite affordable and can be arranged to be paid through private funding from other animal welfare and community groups. In some cases, McKee Project trainers can travel from Costa Rica to other locations and impart on-site.

The work of the McKee Project goes beyond sterilization. To learn more about how the McKee Project unites communities for animal welfare, please visit their website or their home on Facebook.