Mar. 8—Barbara Coulter has seen the problem playing out right outside the window of her office on Tesuque Pueblo.

It’s the sight of lost, emaciated, disoriented stray dogs and cats wandering the pueblo looking for something — food, warmth, shelter or maybe someone to be kind to them.

“What’s the outcome for them? It’s not going to be good,” said Coulter, the utility director for the pueblo. “They’re going to die of starvation or get hit by a car.”

If they are lucky, she said, they become part of the local dog community, which can cause another problem: breeding, which can lead to more dogs and cats on the small pueblo north of Santa Fe.

The pueblo is taking action this weekend with two days of spay and neuter clinics, mostly for residents, as well as an animal medical clinic that will provide vaccinations, microchipping, deworming and tick- and flea-prevention measures.

“Clearly there is an unmet need, and we are meeting that need,” she said in an interview Friday shortly before animal medical staffers from various agencies, including RezDawg Rescue out of Colorado, began setting up the clinic in the pueblo’s Intergenerational Center.

The short-term goal is to spay or neuter more than 100 animals — all of those appointments are already booked, Coulter said — and offer other animal medical services to anyone who shows up, including non-pueblo members, between 10 a.m. and noon both days. The animals getting spayed and neutered will be dropped off earlier in the day and picked up later in the afternoon, she said.

The longer-term goal is to draw attention to a problem that is affecting not just pueblos but also communities throughout the state. While the problem of animals not being spayed or neutered is more serious on tribal and pueblo lands than many places, it’s a challenge facing other rural communities, said Angela Cerci, founder of RezDawg Rescue, which offers mobile animal medical services.

It’s not that rural or tribal residents care less about taking care of their animals, it’s that those communities may not have physical or economic access to services for pets, she said in an interview Friday.

“On the Navajo Nation … and in rural areas, people love their pets just as much as anywhere else,” she said.

Compounding the problem is the fact people drop off unwanted animals on pueblo lands, said Trace Rabern, an attorney who serves as a judge for the pueblo.

Rabern said the pueblo is one of the first open areas of land north of Santa Fe and a place where “people are solving their own personal pet problem by dumping them nearby, and then they make their way into the traditional village [of Tesuque]. It’s awful. It’s kind of overwhelming for a small community.”

Santa Fe County animal control officers have no jurisdiction on the pueblo and thus only respond to calls from pueblo law enforcement regarding dogs that may be a menace, Coulter said.

“We don’t pick up those [stray] animals” because of jurisdictional limitations, sheriff’s office spokeswoman Denise Womack-Avila confirmed in a voice message.

County Commissioner Justin Greene said pueblo and county officials met earlier this week to discuss the problem and look for a way to address it together.

“I hope this is the beginning of a regional solution,” Greene said in an interview.

Rabern said she hopes the two entities can come together to help alleviate the problem for the sake of all involved — including the animals.

“The dogs don’t know where the boundaries are,” she said. “They don’t know if it’s county or tribal land.”