Dallas Animal Services (DAS) is pleading and asking for the community to foster or adopt pets urgently as they are out of medium and large dog kennels as of May 24 with hundreds of pets expected to arrive at the end of the week.
The pet intake has been rising steadily for a few weeks, which is common for animal shelters once the weather starts to warm up.
“With the weather being nicer, dogs are outside more they’re getting loose more, maybe getting more strays,” Dallas Animal Services Public Information Officer Leah Backo said during an interview. “I think what we’re seeing is the steady intake as the world opens back up.”
The DAS needs to find forever homes for more than 300 animals. That’s a dangerously high number for the shelter.
All pets are currently free to adopt, are spayed/neutered, vaccinated and microchipped. They also come with a voucher for a free veterinary visit.
“We have a very high RTO, which stands for return to owner percentage,” Backo said. “If a dog comes in as a stray, which is a lot of our population, we will always scan them for a microchip and if there (has) been an owner registered to that microchip we will try to get in contact them. We post them on our website if someone’s looking for their pet, we try to do everything we can possibly do to find their owner if they belong to someone and a lot of them do and a lot of them get their owners (to) contact us or come up to the shelter to find their pet.”
For more information or to gain access to the foster application, click here.
“Any help that the community can provide we would greatly appreciate it,” Backo said. “We believe in being very transparent with our community because we know that when we are in a time of being more transparent about it they step up and they help out.”