By Fox23.com News Staff
TULSA, Okla. — The Humane Society of Tulsa’s Operation Pit Stop program is continuing its mission of providing affordable services to pet owners and helping combat pet overpopulation.
“Today, we’re doing one of our mobile clinics,” said Gina Gardner, the President of the Humane Society of Tulsa. “We call it Operation Pit Stop because we bring the veterinary clinic to offer spay and neuter and microchipping out into the community…We are completely mobile. That’s what you see behind us are these trailers, pop-up tents.”
Gardner said pet owners are able to drive through and drop their pets off at their appointment time before picking them up later once their procedures are complete.
These type of clinics are vital for broadening access to pet care that helps support individual families and the wider community.
“Tulsa and northeastern Oklahoma has a huge pet overpopulation problem, so spaying and neutering is really the key to helping curb that. What we’re doing is we’re trying to break down barriers. We’re trying to provide access to that care. Not only are we here in the community, making transportation not an issue—we’re very close by—but also all services today are free. There’s no cost to the pet owners at all for all of the services. That’s hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of services that they’re receiving. We’re removing the financial barrier; we’re removing transportation barriers by trying to be here easily accessible and affordable.”
Unfortunately, Gardner said the importance of these clinics also means the demand and those in need of appointments are high.
“When we post the clinics, they fill up very, very quickly. I know people get frustrated with that and we’re trying to do as many as we can…Even today, we had a few no show appointments and our Facebook page was flooded with people saying ‘please, can I come? Please, can I come?’ The need is there. There’s no doubt that there’s a need. We just need to get more of these clinics to the community.”
Gardner said strong community support is one way to help the organization offer these services more regularly to pet owners.
“I think it’s really important for the community to support these clinics. the cost of providing this is several thousand dollars and we’re very fortunate that we have some national partners like Banfield Foundation, Wings of Rescue, that are helping to underwrite this cost, but it’s really, really important that the community and the community leaders get behind these clinics and local donations, local foundations, really need to support the work that we’re doing so that these clinics can be going on all the time and we can really get an impact on our pet overpopulation.”
While this week’s Operation Pit Stop clinics are finished, Gardner said they’ll be opening up another one as soon as they’re able to.
The best way to stay up to date on when the next Operation Pit Stop clinic appointments open, you can follow the Humane Society of Tulsa on Facebook here and on Instagram here.
