PACC Mobile Medical Unit delays debut

TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) - Pima Animal Care Center unveiled their mobile veterinary unit in July, but it has yet to hit the road.

Nancy Kate Grayson is an animal lover through and through. She knows taking care of a pet is difficult.

“It’s not a simple situation,” Grayson said. “We are short vets, we’re short accessibility, it’s expensive. There’s just lots of reason it’s not so simple.”

She was thrilled to hear about the mobile vet clinic PACC announced months ago.

“We live in a community where you know we are in a lock of affordable vet care in general, though not just Pima county, but Arizona,” PACC director Monica Dangler said, “then we have these vast resource deserts that are not just deserts for veterinary care and pet care, but people care as well.”

As of now, the mobile clinic remains at the PACC location on Silverbell. They say they’re still in the process of training drivers and learning how to use the equipment.

“We need to be extra careful so we’re using it on different days and things like that,” Dangler said. “To make sure that we’re 100% good to go when we don’t have PACC pets there, when we have people’s pets.”

PACC’s capacity numbers are constantly pushed to the limit. They recently announced they have 472 dogs.

“We need to get more animals out of the system quicker or have less animals coming in so we’re kind of hitting both ends of the spectrum with our programming,” Dangler said. “This mobile medical unit will help hopefully on that intake piece by providing that care our in the community so they don’t need to come to PACC.”

While they don’t have a date set for when the medical unit will hit the road, many pet owners will remain waiting anxiously.

“Hopefully the planner here can address all of those things and we can see the unit land sooner than later for sure we’re all very excited about it,” Grayson said.

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