This weekend marked the shelter’s first ever Community Give Back Event. Throughout the day, cats and dogs were offered free vaccination and microchipping while a free community pet food and supply pantry was offered. The Weber County Health Department even offered a free vaccine clinic.

Before the event started, organizers took a few minutes to address the crowd with a special program.

This included Weber County Commissioner Sharon Bolos.

“I have the privilege of overseeing the animal shelter,” she said. “It just came into my portfolio just over a year ago. At the time, there were a lot of improvements that needed to happen.”

She said that with the arrival of Weber County Animal Services director Siri Main last year and the staff that works under her, those improvements have become a reality.

“I’m really proud of the team here and all that they’ve done to improve animal services in Weber County for the entire community,” Bolos said. “At Weber County Animal Services, animal welfare is our primary focus. We seek partners who have the best interest of animals in their hearts and in their minds because that’s how we feel at the shelter.”

She added that the goals of the shelter also go beyond the animals in their care.

“Our goal is also to enhance community involvement,” she said. “We have a lot of great partners. We have a lot of great volunteers that come in on a daily basis to help us with animal enrichment. We have partners who help us at events. We have partners who help us with cleaning. We have volunteers and opportunities for everyone in the community to help in some way, and we really appreciate that.”

Following Bolos was Siri Main, who took over as the shelter’s director in June 2025.

Main took time to highlight some of the changes that have taken place at the shelter, both big and small, since then.

“First and foremost, we have opened up for an extra hour every single day,” she said. “We’re open six days per week, Monday through Saturday.”

Monday-Friday, the shelter is open noon-5:30 and from noon-5 p.m. on Saturdays.

“That’s a total of six hours that our animals are getting exposed that you can come in and reclaim them if you’ve lost a pet, you can adopt them, join our foster or volunteer programs,” she said.

She added that some big changes have happened within the facility as well.

“We have streamlined policies and improved cleaning protocols,” she said. “I’m proud to announce, we have had no outbreaks since June 2025. We’ve had no parvo outbreaks, we’ve had no kennel cough outbreaks. Everything has been detected very, very early and contained.”

Main added that a new Facebook page will debut for the shelter that posts animals that are on a stray hold to help connect lost animals back with their families.

She said there have also been major efforts concerning programming at the shelter.

“We revamped the volunteer program,” she said. “We now have dog walking, cleaning and transportation. … One of the big things that was asked of us by the community is to involve our youngsters within the animal shelter. Rescue Readers is where your children can come and read to cats and dogs, build up their confidence in reading and build up the animals’ confidence as well.”

Main said they have also introduced a foster program and new animal enrichment programs. Saturday’s program also acknowledged the help of other community partners such as the Coldwater Animal Hospital, Wasatch Hollow Animal Hospital, The House Cat, Best Friends Animal Society and the Weber-Morgan Health Department.

Following the kickoff program, Main told the Standard-Examiner that Saturday was about giving back to the community that has given so much to the shelter.

“This is the first of its kind,” she said. We are hoping we can do this at least once per year, if not, twice per year.”

She said the new programming that has been implemented such as the volunteer program and the fostering program have helped make a huge difference.

“It gets our animals out, it gets them seen, it gets them out of the shelter setting through the foster system or even volunteers who come here and walk dogs,” she said. “When volunteers come to walk dogs, that means that paid staff members can give attention to others that might not be able to be accessed or viewed by the public, but they still need enrichments as well.”

For more on Weber County Animal Services, visit https://www.webercountyutah.gov/Animal_Shelter/.