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VCOP-Mobile launches with ribbon cutting

Dean Jim Lloyd, center, flanked by Drs. Natalie Isaza and Brian DiGangi, cuts the ribbon to officially launch the new Veterinary Community Outreach Program’s mobile service on Nov. 7. (Photo by Mindy Miller)

The college’s dean, Dr. Jim Lloyd, joined faculty, fellow administrators and students for a ribbon-cutting event on Nov. 7 to celebrate the launching of a new mobile unit that will extend the services of the college’s Veterinary Community Outreach Program.

The new unit will provide spay-neuter training for veterinary medical students and will supplement regional shelter operations that have limited access to medical services. A trailer equipped for spay-neuter surgery and other procedures, the unit will be able to accommodate three students and one instructor per clinical rotation and up to four animals at one time. It has a built-in electrical generator for use in the event of power outages and on-board cage space for temporary animal housing and postsurgical recovery.

The trailer was made possible with $283,040 in funding from PetSmart Charities and $80,000 from the Petco Foundation and is expected to begin regularly operating at regional shelters in the spring of 2017.

It will soon be traveling with UF veterinary medical students to extend spay-neuter services to area shelters that do not have access to surgical facilities.

Among those who attended the event was Dr. Rick Sutliff, who represented the Florida Veterinary Medical Association.