Lake County Animal Shelter hits capacity, waives adoption fees

Lake County Animal Services has reached capacity for dogs at their shelter. They’re hoping to help clear up some space by waiving reclaim and adoption fees through the end of the month.”We’re daily playing a game we call musical dogs which is where we’re shuffling and moving and trying to make space for everybody who is incoming,” said Whitney Boylston, Director of the Office of Animal Services for the county.She says a slow weekend of adoptions put them at capacity for dogs by Monday. “We do our best work when we have 99 or fewer in our care,” Boylston said. “We’re currently housing about 170 dogs and we know we’ve got more on the way in today. And so what that means is not every dog is going to be able to get the care that it deserves.” Boylston says this isn’t an issue of more admissions, it’s an issue of longer lengths of stay. Harley, for example, is one of Lake County Animal Shelter’s longest residents. “Harley has been in care for over a thousand days,” Boylston said. Next month, he’ll be celebrating an anniversary no shelter dog should. Three years. “He’s a great dog,” Boylston said. “He is athletic; he is part of one of our standard dog play groups here, so he does well with others. He’s got this… a little bit of an obsession with his jolly ball,”.Harley isn’t a puppy, but he’s not a senior, either. They’re not sure why his stay has been longer than most. “That’s the million-dollar question,” She said.Harley is one of about 170 dogs Lake County Animal Services is caring for right now. That’s seventy percent more than the shelter would ideally have. They’ve had some dogs get adopted this week, but they’ve had just as many new ones come in.But animal services says the issue isn’t an increase in admissions; it’s an increase in the dogs length of stay. “Dogs that use to be in our care for just a short period of time, whether that was minutes or hours or days are now spending weeks with us,” Boylston said. “So that extension of the length of stay is really where our struggle is.”And some of these dogs may have a home to return to, but their microchip information is out of date. “We’ve got a lot of pets in our care right now that we can’t reunite with their family because their microchip information is out of date or doesn’t exist at all,” Boylston said. “So those pets are sitting here taking up a kennel when really they should be sleeping in their own bed at night,.”You can help by using the shelter’s free service to check and update your pet’s microchip, by fostering, or by adopting while adoption and reclaim fees are waived through the end of the month. And maybe Harley won’t have to spend a third anniversary inside the shelter. “He’s just being overlooked,” Boylston said. You can find more information on the shelter here.

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