The San Jacinto animal campus is located at 581 S. Grand Avenue. Operating hours on Thursday have been extended until dark. The site typically shuts down at 4 p.m. From Friday to Sunday, the campus will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

As an incentive to boost interest, the department is waiving all general adoption fees at county-run shelters this Sunday, although mandatory basic license fees will still be required. Licenses range from $12 to $25 for altered pets.

The Riverside County Department of Animal Services spokeswoman Veronica Perez shared a statement that startled many, saying, “The animal campus is at crisis capacity with dogs, and we need immediate public support to foster and adopt large breeds.”Available to adopt at San Jacinto Animal Campus, I am a female, 35.00 lbs, brown brindle and white Terrier and Queensland Heeler. Age: The shelter staff thinks I am about 9 months old. More Info: I have been at the shelter since Apr 23, 2025.

The shelter, San Jacinto campus — one of four operated by Riverside County, has a total of 153 kennel spaces. However, there are currently 424 canines impounded at the facility.

“Dogs are sharing kennels with two or three kennel mates,” Perez said. “More dogs are coming in than leaving on a daily basis.”

Just this week, a batch of bulldog mix puppies were brought in, according to the San Jacinto Animal Services website. They are approximately 3 days old and still nursing from their mother. Foster help was still being sought as of Friday.

To quell this, all customary return-to-owner fees and all other adoption fees are suspended for anyone willing to take home a pet from the campus, Perez said.

“All resources will be provided for fosters who might be able to help between Thursday and Sunday,” she added.

Fostering involves taking the pets home and nurturing them in an environment where they can thrive, outside of cages, for set periods of time, and not permanently, officials said.

Along with the San Jacinto Valley Animal Campus, the Coachella Valley Animal Campus in Thousand Palms, and the Western Riverside County Animal Shelter in Jurupa Valley, will be open on Sundays from now on, as part of a countywide effort to place more dogs and cats into homes.

Information regarding shelters’ hours of operation and pets ready for adoption is available at www.rcdas.org.

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“It’s time to tell contract cities, ‘You need to go on your own and build your own shelters,”‘ Supervisor Kevin Jeffries said. “We’re going to have to do something different. We cannot continue to be your punching bag. Because your city has hundreds, if not thousands, of animals being turned into our (four) county shelters, nationally and internationally, we receive the criticism.”

Jeffries vented his frustrations during an otherwise routine series of contract rate adjustments for the cities of Desert Hot Springs, Hemet and Palm Desert.

The adjustments were required under the 2024-25 fiscal year budget to contend with unforeseen higher operational costs impacting the Department of Animal Services, resulting in 5% across-the-board hikes in rates, totaling roughly $1.58 million in total obligations for all three municipalities until June 30, 2025.

Most of Jeffries’ displeasure seemed to stem from last week’s announcement of a lawsuit against the county filed by four animal welfare activists in the Coachella Valley.

The suit, spearheaded by the Rancho Mirage-based Walter Clark Law Group and filed in Riverside County Superior Court, seeks a permanent injunction against the Department of Animal Services’ humane euthanasia programs.

Clark called it a “groundbreaking case” that’s predicated on the Hayden Act of 1998. That legislation, authored by then-state Sen. Tom Hayden, D-Santa Monica, states, in part, “no adoptable animal should be euthanized if it can be adopted into a suitable home.”

The measure further bars euthanization even if a pet lacks qualities that make the animal suited to immediate adoption, “but could become adoptable with reasonable efforts.”

The plaintiffs, based on data gleaned and produced by the nonprofit Best Friends Animal Society, contend that in 2022, county Department of Animal Services shelters “killed more animals than any other reporting shelter in the United States.”

Altogether, in 2022 and 2023, an estimated 24,000 canines and felines were euthanized in county shelters, according to the organization.

“We’ve been asking all these different groups that keep quoting ‘we’re the worst in the nation (for kill rates)’ where are you getting that? And it’s one group on the internet — Best Friends,” Supervisor Karen Spiegel said. “Many municipalities have the same challenges. We have had a severe amount of animals, hundreds at a time, coming into the shelters. Municipalities cannot take these animals. It’s very challenging.”

To date in 2024, she said, there have been five major seizures by animal control officers countywide, during which hundreds of dogs and cats have been impounded due to neglect, malnutrition and related factors, largely attributable to hoarding by residents ill-equipped to provide care.

Spiegel said in spite of the county now refusing to dedicate resources for contract animal control services in cities within neighboring San Bernardino County, the Department of Animal Services remains under pressure handling unincorporated communities and servicing municipalities in Riverside County.

“People need to know, not everything that’s spewed out is accurate,” the supervisor said. “And it’s not fair to continue to bad-mouth our staff.”

Jeffries said he recognized the issue of cities constructing their own shelter space “won’t be fixed overnight.”

“But how much longer can we ask our staff to take the abuse they’ve been taking on a daily basis before they finally say, ‘take my (employee) badge, I’m done’? What we’re doing now is not working.”

A few municipalities in the county maintain independent animal control services, either through city-paid personnel or contracts with nongovernmental organizations. Examples include the cities of Canyon Lake, Lake Elsinore, Menifee, Murrieta, Temecula and Wildomar that contract with Wildomar-based nonprofit Animals Friends of the Valleys. The city of Palm Springs has its own animal services department.

Last month, the board approved formation of an Ad Hoc Committee for Continuous Improvement of Animal Services, headed by Supervisors Manuel Perez and Yxstian Gutierrez.

The pair pledged to delve into the “high kill rate” allegations, as well as analyze the department’s adoption policies, data banking and distribution.

“There are a lot of issues we’ve prioritized, but this hasn’t been one of them,” Perez said. “You’re right about the cities. Eventually I think they’ll get there. Every city needs to pay their fair share. We are way behind. There is misinformation out there, partly because we have not updated our data. We need to clear up the misinformation for the public. We can all win. But we have to be willing to come together to collaborate.”

The committee is slated to hold its first meeting in the next two months.

If you are interested in adopting a pet from the Riverside County Department of Animal Services, click here.

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A group of elementary school children from Los Amigos Elementary School in Rancho Cucamonga comes to the Friends of Upland Animal Shelter on Monday afternoons, part of the “Reading Buddies” program, to read to the dogs and cats at the shelter.

While some local shelter employees say they haven’t reached pre-pandemic numbers, adoption rates are lower and don’t match the high number of animals coming into shelters now, post-COVID. The dogs coming in are younger — between 1 and 3 years old — and the breeds, shelter employees said, are mainly German shepherds, huskies, and pit bulls — like Hazel.

In 2023, Friends of Upland Animal Shelter took in 1,835 animals, 934 of those were dogs, and one-third were under 5 months old. A report published in 2024 found the majority of those animals were brought in as strays.

That year 1,252 animals were adopted out, 47% of which were dogs.

In pre-pandemic 2019, the shelter reported 2,368 animals came into the shelter and 1,542 were adopted, more than half of those adoptions were dogs. In comparison, 2020  saw 1,540 animals come in, with 1,506 adoptions. Dogs were 33% of the adoptions.

In 2023, the number of stray dogs taken in by shelters nationwide increased 6% in the period from January to November, as compared to 2022, and that number is up about 22% from 2021, according to Shelter Animals Count, which surveys nearly 7,000 shelters nationally. 

“Most of our shelters are overrun with huskies, shepherds, and pit mixes or purebred pit bulls,” said Nikole Bresciani, CEO and president of Inland Valley Humane Society in Pomona. “The reality is, is that the large dogs are harder to place, especially those large dogs that have behavior issues.”

It’s a similar situation at the Rancho Cucamonga Animal Center, according to spokesperson Jennifer Camacho-Curtis. They too have seen an increase in larger dog breeds between the ages of 1 and 3, most brought in as strays, she said in an email.

The Rancho Cucamonga shelter has seen a similar trend in the numbers of animals coming into the shelter compared to what is being adopted out.

Friends of Upland Animal Shelter works with the Inland Valley Humane Society to try to move animals out of the shelters faster and to prevent overcrowding.

Inland Valley Humane Society is faced with a different challenge.

Animals will be adopted or moved to another shelter on Saturday and by the time the doors reopen Monday more animals will have been brought in, Bresciani said.

“No matter how many we push out we’re getting more than we can handle and they’re coming in at an alarmingly fast rate,” she said.

The low adoption rates and high intake rates have created a difficult situation where other shelters they work with have had less of an ability to take animals because their own facilities are at capacity, Bresciani said.

“It makes it frustrating … there were things that we used to be able to do to save more lives,” said Shelly Foglesong, vice president of Friends of Upland. At one time, she could pull animals from the Inland Valley shelter to ease overcrowding, but with Upland at or near capacity that ability has dropped.

It is really a perfect storm, Bresciani said, from unprepared and perhaps uneducated owners, to a drop in animals that have been spayed or neutered following a period of COVID restrictions on those procedures, and owners who are unable to keep their pets after their situations were affected by COVID.

The most common reason Foglesong said she’s heard for owners turning in their pets is lack of living situations where pets are welcome or affordable. The cost of procedures for pets has also been referenced as a hardship.

A poodle was surrendered with a broken leg, Foglesong said. They were offered options for CareCredit or payment plans and the owners chose to surrender the dog.

Despite steps shelters are taking to help with spaying and neutering to reduce overpopulation, Bresciani said, past restrictions during the pandemic caused a backlog.

People also got pets when they were feeling isolated during the pandemic.

The thinking was “I want this pet and I want it to be perfect and I want it now,” Bresciani said, when in reality “pets are like children” with a lot of energy and they also “don’t always do what you want them to do.”

Many shelters, including Inland Valley Humane Society and Friends of Upland Animal Shelter, provide options for training. Inland Valley also has an online rehoming service for owners unable to care for their pets.

Hazel was one of those brought to the Upland shelter as a stray in July 2023. The lack of space in the shelter has her living in one of the meet-and-greet spaces. The door has a paper sunflower with details about the brown and white pit bull terrier, who’s about 6 years old, along with a cheerful greeting.

“We usually put her in the rotations, the kids like seeing familiar faces,” said Sherrie Darrow, volunteer coordinator for Friends of Upland Animal Shelter.

For the children to see that not every animal gets adopted super fast, that’s a good lesson, Darrow said. Some animals, like Hazel, will be around through the school year. Other times they will see a puppy they’ll never see again because it’s gonna get adopted quickly.

The post Some Inland Empire shelters say they’re getting animals in faster than they can get them out appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The Black Saturday Special gives would-be adopters the chance to find their perfect pet for free all week – the first time Animal Services has offered the post-Thanksgiving promotion for a full week. Participating shelters include the Coachella Valley Animal Campus in Thousand Palms and the Western Riverside County/City Animal Shelter in Jurupa Valley.

More than 100 pets were adopted on the promotion’s first day on Saturday (Nov. 27).

The COVID-19 pandemic forced most animal organizations to scale back large-scale events. But Riverside County’s shelters are becoming more populated and homeless pets need a loving home for the holidays, said Kim Youngberg, an Animal Services deputy director.

“This adoption promotion has been one of our most popular,” Youngberg said. “We really hope people without a pet at this time of year can find room in their hearts – and homes – for a four-legged friend.”

Although pets can be adopted for free, would-be adopters should be mindful that a dog license must be purchased if the adopter lives within the county’s jurisdictional areas. Dog license information/prices can be found here.

All adoptable pets can be viewed on the county’s official website.

Riverside County Animal Services | Contributed

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