Animal adoption event clears out OKC’s shelter
The Oklahoma City Animal Welfare Center was quiet Monday.
Two cats sit in one of the rooms up front in the reception area. A woman brings in a pregnant dog. But the sounds of barking dogs is gone, replaced by a quiet sense of joy among staff who accomplished something they never thought possible.
For the first time in anyone’s recent memory, the shelter was emptied Saturday as all of the 227 dogs and cats up for adoption found homes. It was a record day. The previous mark of 120 happened two years ago at a mass adoption event.
Clear the Shelters, a nationwide event promoting free adoptions was a smashing success in Oklahoma City.
“We had hoped to do about 100 adoptions, so when we hit that number it was a huge surprise for us,” Oklahoma City Animal Welfare Superintendent Jon Gary said. “It far exceeded our expectations.”
When the shelter opened at 10 a.m. Saturday, Gary estimates there were already 200 people in line ready to adopt.
“The amount of people that came out and showed their support was unbelievable,” Gary said. “It was special to see that.”
There were 90 cats adopted, along with 135 dogs and two guinea pigs.
“Our Facebook outreach was amazing,” community outreach manager Jaurita Becker said. “I had people telling me that’s all they saw on their wall for days ahead of time. People were sharing it and talking about it, and that helped to get the word out.”
While some of the animals will likely be returned, Gary believes the vast majority found good homes. Free doesn’t necessarily mean people will value the animals less, he said.
“There’s been research done by the ASPCA, some of which we have participated in, that shows there’s no correlation between how much someone loves or cares for an animal and what they paid for it,” he said.
It was an all hands on deck day as 60 members of the staff helped work the adoption, along with a cadre of volunteers. When it was all, over everyone took a breath.
“There was joy and exhaustion,” Becker said. “We had planned to stay open until 8 p.m. but we ended up closing at 5:30 p.m. There was a high, like we really did this. Even today, that’s all they’re talking about. Everyone worked really hard and we had so much support from the public.”
But it won’t take long for the shelter to fill up again. Gary said they take in about 25 to 50 animals per day. There were already three dogs in kennels waiting for homes on Monday. The shelter’s stray room, which houses animals that haven’t been processed for adoption yet, is still well populated.
But the mass exodus gave shelter workers a chance to give the shelter a deep clean and to move others from the stray room up to the adoption room.
“Now there are more animals that will have an opportunity to be saved because those are gone,” Gary said. “A lot of them wouldn’t have had that chance if we hadn’t cleared out this weekend.”