City of Amarillo approves 5 veterinarians for Amarillo Animal Management & Welfare

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - City council approved a motion to staff five professional veterinarians at the Amarillo Animal Shelter.

Since opening the new vet services building, Amarillo Animal Management and Welfare is using the business model of staffing contract veterinarians.

Director of Amarillo Animal Management and Welfare, Victoria Medley says, this has allowed the pets they take in to all have quality vet care.

“Really what it does is it opens the door for us to have a more variety of vets there. Shelter medicine can be very difficult, and so we’ve been able to have a team put together to assure that all our animals on a daily basis have access to vet services,” says Medley.

Having five veterinarians on contract will allow the animal shelter to work with Texas Tech School of Veterinary Medicine.

“We partner with them and so there are times that instead of a contract vet there, we’ll have a an actual instructor with students there being able to spay and neuter animals,” stated Medley.

Medley says the biggest benefit of having five professional veterinarians is they will be able to uphold not adopting out animals that aren’t already fixed.

“They’re coming out of the shelter already fixed and that is a huge win for our community as we have a large population of stray animals,” says Medley.

The veterinarians will be able to provide services like disease management, spay and neuter surgery’s, and more specific services; since field officers pickup 800-1000 animals a month.

“So sometimes they’re hit by car, sometimes they’ve been another fight, so that is the other thing is when our officers bring it in--we have vets there, they can look at the animals and see how best treat them,” says Medley.

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