Local Opinion: Help us find a home for local dogs

Five hundred and twenty dogs. Each with their own backgrounds, stories, personalities and quirks, and each of whom deserve their chance at a new home, find themselves at Pima Animal Care Center today.

Month after month for the past year and a half, more dogs have come into PACC than have been placed in the community. Because of this, we have continually hovered around 500 dogs in the shelter. The reasons vary and include evictions, rising prices of gas and other goods (including pet goods), lack of access to veterinary care, and the increasing difficulty of finding affordable pet-friendly housing. This situation is not unique to PACC; municipal shelters across the country are in crisis.

“But the County just opened a brand-new shelter in 2018 with bond-approved funding,” you may be thinking. Yes we did, and the facility is wonderful! But even with the additional kennel space, there are only so many kennels in the building. We can flex up significantly in times of crisis and put animals in temporary kennels in hallways and offices, but that’s not sustainable over weeks and months. The fact is, we were never designed to consistently care for 500 or more animals every single day of the year.

So we need your help.

Adopting a PACC dog or cat has the biggest immediate benefit because it gets pets out of the shelter and into loving homes. Our adoptions counselors work hard to match people with the right pet for their situation. Fostering, too, is vital. It lets us learn more about the pets in our care and helps them escape shelter stress, while allowing you to help without making a lifelong commitment. Volunteering, donating, and even sharing our social media messages make a difference, too. There is truly no feeling like sending a deserving animal home with an excited new family. We want to make this a reality for all of the adoptable animals at PACC.

We see amazing things happen every day here at PACC. Our goal, always, is to help create, preserve, and enrich that human-animal bond. Lost animals are reunited with their owners, sometimes after months or even years apart. Animals are given an opportunity to heal, both physically through the work of our wonderful clinic staff and emotionally through the love of staff and volunteers. Families and animals meet, creating bonds that will last a lifetime. All of this is thanks to our passionate volunteers (who served more than 9,100 hours in August alone) and incredible professional staff, who work nonstop to ensure the best outcomes for pets and their people.

Already have dogs? I bet you’d hate to lose them. So, please, please make sure they have collars, tags or microchips. We take in an average of 30 dogs every day whose owners never thought they’d jump that fence or slip out the front door when visitors arrived. Visit pima.gov/animalcare to find lost pets and for how PACC can help you continue to experience the love and joy of a family pet. We are here to help.

PACC is open from noon to 7 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends. We welcome walk-ins and we have so many incredible dogs — and cats! — who would love to meet you.

With your help, we can find loving homes for these amazing animals. Together, we can overcome this crisis.