Orange County Animal Services announced last week it is expanding its operational hours on weekends, now offering a full day of adoption services on Sundays between 10am and 6pm. This is the first update to the shelter’s hours in approximately a decade and aims to improve availability of adoption services.
Orange County Animal Services typically has between 250 to 300 pets in its care at any given time. They are viewable on the shelter’s website here.
Last year the shelter was visited by nearly 87,000 people. Weekends have proven to be the most popular opportunity for people to visit the shelter, which is located adjacent to the Mall at Millenia on Conroy Road in Orlando.
“In reviewing our data, it was no surprise that Saturdays and Sundays prove most popular among our interested adopters,” said Diane Summers, manager for Orange County Animal Services. “We had more than 15,000 people visit the shelter on Saturdays last year and nearly 10,000 on Sundays, and that’s with only being open on Sunday afternoons. With opening for a full eight-hour day on Sundays, we anticipate seeing another 500 shelter visitors per month.”
While the shelter had been open for a full day on Wednesdays, those hours will be reduced, from originally 10am through 6pm to now 2pm through 6pm. The later open time will provide shelter staff with opportunities for additional cleaning and for staff-wide training events. According to Orange County, the shelter will be open from 10am through 6pm for every other day of the week.
“This modification to our hours will be beneficial to shelter staff and pets alike,” said Summers. “Our main goal is to help boost adoptions. Last year we achieved a record adoption rate with 9,066 pets finding new homes. We’d love to see that number surpass 10,000 this year and encourage anyone looking at getting a new pet to consider adopting through our shelter.”
