Salt Lake County Animal Services is dedicated to providing pet services to every person in the county, so they created a new program to help them do just that. 

Pet assistance on wheels (P.A.W.S) gives SLCO Animal Services the opportunity to perform vehicle-based spay and neuter surgeries. The mobile clinic will travel to every city in the county and provide free spay and neuter surgeries for owned pets to help control the pet overpopulation. 

P.A.W.S will be ready and on the road in June or July, where they will be available at least once a week and up to four times a week for residents. While it hasn’t been launched yet, animal services staff see the high demand for the service. 

“Once we get it up and running, we believe it will significantly benefit our community residents who have pets in need of this service,” said Jami Johanson, communications and public relations manager for Salt Lake County Animal Services. 

Residents can expect a spay or neuter procedure to take anywhere from 15 minutes to over an hour depending on the size, weight, age and health of the animal. Following the surgery, technicians will stay for a few hours and make sure your pet is doing well from the surgery. 

The program has received funding for a full year of services, and once they’ve seen the initial reaction from the cities, they hope to be able to continue the program and service pets and residents of Salt Lake County. 

With the amount of homeless pets, this program will help keep them safe and healthy, as well as stop the homeless pet population from growing. 

“With shelters and rescues overflowing with wonderful pets, assisting in population control within our community would also [be] beneficial to our homeless pet population,” Johanson said. 

The primary focus of the program is to sterilize pets in the communities, but they do remain open to the idea of offering additional services if they can secure the time, budget and resources. λ