Lodi Animal Shelter full
Adoptions lag as more pets turned in to shelter
In a Facebook post on Wednesday, the Lodi Animal Service department shared that there is a surge of animals that are in their shelter, which has caused them to refuse animals due to the lack of space and availability at the shelter.
“We have seen the least amount of pet adoptions this year than in the past,” said Lodi Animal Service Officer Jordan Kranich.
According to him, the shelter had an overwhelming amount of pets that the shelter received, which it could not facilitate due to spacing issues.
The shelter offers 10 large cages for small dogs, which usually houses two dogs in one cage, and 15 cages that are designated for large dogs.
For cats, they are allowed to be more flexible about accepting them because they tend to be smaller and it is easier to put them together, but they only have room for 30 to 36 cats.
“We had an extended kitten season, with nearly 65 kittens being sheltered, there were so many that we started housing them in crates, to avoid turning them away,” said Kranich.
Kranich said that on average they could shelter a minimum of 30 to 35 cats, and 25 to 30 dogs, depending on the dog sizes. However, they have been forced to facilitate more animals, due to stray animals being brought in and because people have been abandoning their pets in front of the shelter’s facility.
“One morning there were three large dogs tied to the fence, and a crate with seven kittens next to the dogs,” Kranich said.
According to Kranich, many animals that appear at the shelter are not chipped, and the ones that are, are 90 percent more likely to be returned to their owner.
“For the 10 percent that don’t get picked up they are either intentionally abandoned, or owners do not want to pick them due to the citations associated with the animals,” Kranich said.
Kranich believes that many people that adopt pets during the holidays end up abandoning them because they financially cannot afford to keep the pets, or no longer want to bear the responsibility of owning the pet. That then leads to owners, dropping off their animals near abandoned buildings or at parks, and as a result forces the city to take care of the animals.
According to Kranich, many of the stray animals are not from Lodi, but people will come into the shelter claiming they found the animal within city limits and the shelter must then take the animal.
“It’s frustrating because if the animals are not chipped, it makes it harder to prove where the animals are from, meaning we have to take a lot of animals knowing many of them are not from around here,” said Kranich.
The impact of having too many animals at the shelter is that it jeopardizes the likelihood of housing more animals.
According to Kranich, the Lodi Animal Shelter does euthanize 3 percent of its animals. The animals do have to be evaluated before being euthanized.
“We have an animal evaluator come once a week to evaluate the animals if they are deemed too ill or aggressive for anyone to adopt, then they get euthanized, but we try not to euthanize animals and have dropped our euthanization rates from 10 percent to 3 percent over the past few years by partnering with organizations that focus on finding the animals homes,” said Kranich.
The animal shelter has partnered with Veterans Rescue and local humane societies. The animal shelter recently acquired a partnership with the newly built PetSmart in Lodi, which will help facilitate pet adoptions.
Due to the winter season, many animals will be affected by the weather. The animal shelter is keen on finding the animal’s homes and encourages any interested pet parents to reach out to them via Facebook at , or call them (209) 333-6741.