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Second Straight "No-Kill" Year for SLCo Animal Services

The county shelters everything household pets to farm animals when the need arises.
File: SLCo Pit Crew
SLCo Pit Crew celebrates a good year with Facebook post collage.

Salt Lake County’s Animal Services has maintained its “No-Kill” status for the second straight year. The national industry standard is a minimum 90% live release rate for shelters.

Sandy Nelson is the communications director for the department. She says reaching the 92.8% level for 2014 with a limited budget was a challenge.

“That’s when you need to get creative and innovative with your programming. So we do rely on volunteers to help with some of our activities like helping to keep the animals socialized,” says Nelson.

The county started taking steps in 2009 to achieve the rating based on the philosophy that all healthy and treatable animals can be saved. Nelson says much of the future work will focus on helping all residents become good pet owners.

“And for the animals that do find themselves in our care, just being able to place them in loving forever homes,” Nelson says, “So that will be our challenge coming up for the next few years.”

Nelson asks county residents to become involved when they see what may be a stray. She says keep in mind the dog or cat is likely someone’s household pet.

Bob Nelson is a graduate of the University of Utah with a BA in mass communications. He began his radio career at KUER in 1978 when it was still in Kingsbury Hall. That’s also where he met his wife, Maria Shilaos, in 1981. Bob left KUER for commercial radio where he worked for 25 years, and he is thrilled to be back at KUER. Bob and his family are part of an explorer group, fondly known as The Hordes and Masses, which has been seeking out ghost towns and little-known places in Utah for more than twenty years.
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