At North Texas animal shelters, each shelter coordinated an “Empty the Shelter Day”, waiving adoption fees looking to place thousands of animals into forever-homes. Some shelters did charge a registration fee, but the typical costs were much lower than your average day, and over 2,000 pets have been placed.
“Our goal is to bring awareness to animal shelters—that this is a great place to adopt a pet,” said the director for the DFW Humane Society, Sarah Krammerer.
The event grew by word of mouth, with Irving Animal Services manager Corey Price leading the charge. “I sent an email to 10 cities, and they all said yes.” Said Price.
Looking to reduce overcrowding, which increases more during summer months, the Irving shelter received more than six hundred animals a month since April.
With the “Empty the Shelter Day” event, people were lining up outside of shelters for hours, looking to select their new pet. In a matter of hours, most pets had already been picked.
All the shelters did continue their routine application process and screening for all adoptions. Dallas Animal Services typically waives adoption fees for animals who have been in the shelter for two weeks or more.
Said Price, “It’s crazy. All I did was send an email. It warms my heart that we had so many shelters that wanted to do this. This is about saving lives.”
Dallas Animal Services posted their numbers on Facebook. For June, they took in an average of 98 animals per day, and adopted out 687 for the entire month- a record high. That’s about 23 a day, and during Empty the Shelter Day they adopted 149. At day’s end, they had only one cat left of their currently adoptable pets.
You can learn more at the event website emptytheshelter.org.
