Sandy Newton

My journey into animal welfare began at a very young age, bringing home every lost, abandoned, and stray animal I came across.  My parents were very patient as I found homes for nearly all the animals I found.  My father never saw a kitten he didn’t love.  Over the years, we always had two cats and a dog.

While I spent most of my career as a professional photographer, my passion for animal welfare never left me.  Often I was able to combine both.

My commitment to spay neuter began when I joined the Board of Directors of the Lewis & Clark Humane Society.  I saw hundreds of animals being euthanized due to space constraints. The small shelter always appeared to be bursting at the seams.  We had a very small staff at that time, and the poor staff had to decide every week what animal would live and what animal would be euthanized. I found that unacceptable and horribly unfair for the underpaid staff to deal with. All the shelters in Montana were facing the same thing day in and day out.  

There had to be a better answer…

Back in the mid 1990’s, it became abundantly clear that spay & neuter needed to be a major part of our message as a humane organization and as a community.  “Why are we killing thousands of animals due to a lack of space, when there was a quick and easy way to stop the killing through proactive spay and neuter?  Thus, the seed of mass spay neuter began.

In the winter of 2008, Judy Kruzich and I co-founded Spay Montana. Judy ultimately opted to focus her energies on Butte Spay Neuter Task Force, and I began the process of honing Spay Montana into a viable non-profit.