Dog Days adoption festival will be Saturday

They come in all shapes – with pointy or droopy ears, shaggy fur or smooth coats, pint-sized or long-legged – and they’re all looking to be your next best friend.

Dogs from various area shelters will be up for adoption at the Dog Days of Summer on Saturday at the Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service shelter, 2521 N. Flora Road.

The event runs from 1 to 4:30 p.m. and will feature refreshments, family activities and demonstrations with different animals such as search and rescue teams made up of dogs rescued from the shelter.

Attendees can even get a chance to dunk the dog cop – the animal control officer. Past adoption events had more than 50 dogs available, said Patricia Simonet, SCRAPS’s development coordinator.

Simonet said she hopes that through the demonstrations, people will see that it’s possible to find amazing animals at the shelter.

The shelter took in almost 3,000 dogs last year, Simonet said. According to the shelter, 34 percent were returned to their owners, 27 percent were adopted, 14 percent were transferred, 21 percent were killed, and 4 percent were deemed dead on arrival.

“In the last three years, we’ve been getting more animals out alive,” Simonet said. “The numbers are getting better, but it’s not where I’d like to be.”

Events like the Dog Days of Summer help the animals get a home.

“A lot of people are not aware of who we are,” Simonet said. Because of a lack of familiarity with the shelter’s existence, some owners don’t even know that their lost dogs may be in the shelter, she said.

The event is especially fun for the animals, said Diane Rasmussen, interim director of the Spokane Humane Society, which will have several dogs there.

“The dogs get out on the lawn and they get to run and they get to play,” Rasmussen said.

Simonet said the animals are more relaxed outside the shelter. “Dogs get stressed out in a shelter,” she said. “When they’re stressed and barking no one wants to adopt them.”

SCRAPS has its heaviest influx of animals in the spring and summer, Simonet said. With just 72 kennels, the shelter can’t keep them all, and the animals are usually put down if they are not claimed by owners, adopted or transferred to another shelter. “(The stay) can be as short as two weeks,” she said.

She added that the animals are put down mainly because of overpopulation even though some are healthy and adoptable; 45 percent of the 619 dogs euthanized last year were adoptable, according to a shelter census.

The number of cats is even more daunting – 44 percent of the 3,256 cats that came in last year were euthanized.

“Not only is adopting from a shelter a good thing because it saves lives, but we also offer free training,” Simonet said, adding that the main reason people give up their animals is behavior problems, but there are classes and resources available for owners.

“If people knew that 21 percent of their dogs are going to be killed they might not leave their animals here,” Simonet said.