Oakland Animal Services has seen a huge influx this year in the number of small dogs we are getting into the Shelter. This may be a result of movies that highlight little dogs as the stars or the downturn in the economy – people are downsizing to apartments and getting small dogs and then moving out of the area and leaving these little dogs behind. Whatever the reason, we now often have 75 small dogs in the Shelter at any given time! The Shelter was not designed for small dogs. We’ve had to make major changes in our dog housing to accomodate these little guys.
We’ve also developed partnerships with rescue groups outside of the state that can help adopt them out. States like Oregon, Washington and Arizona have not seen an increase in small dogs in their shelters and are able to get them adopted much faster than we can here. This partnership helps us find homes for these little dogs and also helps them compete with puppy mills to prevent an overpopulation of unaltered small dogs in their areas.
We’d like to thank all of the volunteers who helped coordinate the transfer (especially Patty Ozenne), volunteers who transported the dogs out of state, and the organizations who took the dogs:
- Humane Society of Southern Arizona – 20 small dogs on October 3, 2009
- Ginger’s Pet Rescue of Washington State – 18 small dogs on October 17, 2009
- Collar of Hope Rescue of Washington State – 7 small dogs on October 17, 2009
Barbaree, Patty, Sugi and Marnie help get OAS dogs ready to go to Washington State!
OAS dogs on their way to Washington State!
