Coachella Valley and Riverside County animal shelters took in more than 200 runaway or stray animals over the Fourth of July weekend
Tori King
Thousand Palms, Calif. (KESQ)– Local animal shelters are working to find the owners of hundreds of runaway or stay animals that were taken in over the Independence Day weekend. Every year, the Fourth of July sees the highest number of runaway pets out of all the holidays, and this year was no different, according to the Riverside County Department of Animal Services.
Officials with the Riverside County Department of Animal Services confirmed its four shelters took in more than 200 animals between July 4th, and July 6th alone. They believe many of them likely ran away or escaped during 4th of July fireworks celebrations, due to the loud noises.
“We see this every year, especially with us dealing with overcrowding prior to the Fourth of July,” said Damien Cruz, Animal Services Manager with the Coachella Valley Animal Campus. “This really put us in a crisis mode, and we can see that because we’re experiencing critical overcrowding at all of our shelter locations. We have now waived any reclaim fees, so we really want to stress that and make sure that the public is aware if your pet is missing and it’s here at the shelter, or if you are not sure if it’s here at the shelter, we encourage you to please come and look in person.”
The shelter system sent News Channel 3 a breakdown of the numbers this year:
On July 4th, the shelters took 75 animals in, 68 of them were dogs. During that day none of the animals were claimed.
On July 5th, 103 animals were taken in, 73 of them were dogs. On that Saturday, 13 pets were returned to owners.
On July 6th, 62 animals were brought in, 43 were dogs. So far, 12 owners have come to claim their pet.
Over the entire weekend, 240 animals came in, 184 were dogs, and so far 25 have been reunited with their owners. According to those same numbers, 75% of animals that came in were dogs, and only 10% of animals have been returned to their owners so far.
According to a Facebook post by RCDAS, one dog named King was able to be reunited with it’s owner, thanks to micro-chipping technology.
Shelter operators are now urging pet owners who may be missing their animals to please call the shelters, or to come in and look. They also remind pet owners of the importance of micro-chipping your pet, and making sure they are wearing proper identification tags or a collar at all times. So far, every single animal that has been reunited with its owners had some sort of identification with owner information present.
“We do provide free engravable dog tags where we can have the owner’s phone number on there,” said Cruz. “We also have chip scanners pretty much everywhere, not only here in the shelter, but with our Field Services team. So with animals that they find out in the field, they definitely do their best to scan them for chips, get owner information and try and reunite, reunite them prior to impound because obviously that’s impounding is our last resort.”
RCDAS is also urgently asking the community to step up and adopt, with this influx of animals pushing the shelter’s capacity to critical overcrowding levels.
Anyone interested in adopting a pet can find information here.