Orange County Animal Services (OCAS) recently announced the shelter is in dire need of residents to step forward to adopt, foster and volunteer.
Orange County Animal Services (OCAS) staff has reached out to the community multiple times this summer, seeking help to manage the influx of pet intakes the shelter has handled over the last few months.
“At the moment we have 215 dogs in our care, with not a single vacant kennel in our main dog building,” Diane Summers, Manager for Orange County Animal Services, said last week. “This is a concerning situation for our staff, and we are doing our best to care for these pets to the best of our ability. We’re seeking community help to find adopters and foster parents to get dogs out of the shelter and help balance the number that are coming in.”
OCAS is holding two promotions to encourage people to adopt:
- Teacher’s Pet: Employees of Florida schools can adopt a pet for free by showing their workplace identification card.
- Gold Medal Favorite: To celebrate the Olympics, pets that have been in the shelter for more than four weeks will have a gold sticker on their kennel cards, and their adoption fee will be reduced to $10.
“We’ve had 196 adoptions since the beginning of August,” said Summers. “However, we’re taking in more animals than we are adopting out. Kitten Season plays a key role in this, as we’ve taken in hundreds of litters of kittens. These little ones need foster homes to thrive.”
Any resident of Orange County, or surrounding Central Florida and greater Orlando areas, interested in adopting, volunteering or becoming a foster parent can find more information at Orange County Animal Services online.
OCAS provides food, medical care and training for residents interested in becoming foster parents.
