By Trish Svoboda/Images courtesy Prairie Paws Animal Shelter
Prairie Paws Animal Shelter held its ribbon cutting today, February 20, launching a new mobile spay clinic, expanding access to low-cost services for pet owners across Kansas and helping address shelter overcrowding and limited veterinary care in rural communities.
Vanessa Cowie, Chief Executive Officer, said the program is an expansion of existing low-cost clinics operated out of its Manhattan Animal Shelter and the Ottawa Animal Shelter. Those brick-and-mortar clinics serve about 50 animals per day and are often booked one to two months in advance, with some pet owners driving more than an hour each way for appointments. “What we learned is that people are traveling an hour and a half, or an hour each way to participate in these clinics,” said Cowie. “This is how needed this is in rural areas of Kansas.”
Cowie said each clinic day requires one licensed surgeon, one licensed veterinarian and one support staff inside the trailer, plus administrative staff handling paperwork and patient care outside. “Those staff are filling out paperwork, they’re creating medical records, they’re checking in patients and checking out patients, they’re drawing out vaccines and administering pain medication for those pets. So it really takes more like five full time people an entire day to serve about 50 pets.”
Other animal shelters can host the mobile clinic if they have an external power source for the trailer, similar to an RV hookup, and are located within about 90 minutes of the existing clinic sites in Emporia, Ottawa or Manhattan. “In case something goes wrong, we don’t want to ask staff to be that far away from their host.”
The $400,000 mobile unit was funded through a private foundation grant awarded in December 2024.
“We were so fortunate to receive a grant from a private foundation that wanted to tackle the population and the burden on animal shelters,” said Cowie. “What that means is that every patient that we serve is not paying off the cost of building that unit, that mobile clinic. So that’s how the fee to the to the pet owners so low. It’s such a blessing to Kansas that we received this.”
Cowie explained that Prairie Paws hopes to expand its mobile clinic but is currently limited by the number of veterinarians on staff. Once staffing needs are addressed, they aim to reach as many communities as possible across Kansas.
“I hope that anyone who’s funding animal shelters really invest in these types of programs. It’s time to prevent how many animals are going into animal shelters and stop trying to react to the problem. We’ve tried to adopt our way out of this crisis for decades. It’s time to get on the front line and spay and neuter and prevent the overpopulation of pets.”
More information, including appointment scheduling and donation options, can be found at Prairie Paw’s website.
