Kittens, dogs and chinchillas move into new SLO County animal shelter. Get a look inside
A gray kitten scampered across the floor, stopping to tackle another kitten busy licking his paws. Meanwhile, a plump tuxedo cat snoozed in a nearby cabinet, curled up and oblivious to the kitten’s stunts.
The cats live in San Luis Obispo County’s new Animal Services shelter, which opened to the public on Friday, Sept. 9.
The $20.4 million building is located at 865 Oklahoma Ave. — down the road from the old shelter that was built in the 1970s.
The shelter includes two cat rooms with screened-in outdoor patios, individual housing for the dogs next to a grassy courtyard where they can play, and rooms for reptiles and other small animals.
The 20,000-square-foot building can house about 50 dogs and 130 cats depending on their size, according to San Luis Obispo Animal Services Director Dr. Eric Anderson.
“It’s not an increase in the quantity of animal houses, it’s really a qualitative improvement,” Anderson said. “The old place was really dismal to the point where people didn’t want to walk in.”
The new shelter is “comfortable and inviting,” Anderson said, which will attract more potential pet parents and hopefully increase adoption rates, he said.
Cats and dogs have a new place to play
At the old shelter, cats lived in individual cages until adoption.
The new shelter, however, includes two large rooms where cats live in a community. The rooms are connected to screened-in outdoor patios and are filled to the brim with toys and nooks and crannies were the cats can curl up for a nap.
“It gives them more natural activity to climb, play — allows for social activity,” Anderson said.
The room also allows prospective pet owners to play with the cats and get a glimpse of their personalities, “(as) opposed to interacting across a set of cage bars,” Anderson said. “We’re trying to immerse you in this animal experience.”
Down the hall, the shelter also has a dedicated space for feral cat housing, where the cats are held in individual enclosures for six days before joining the community cat rooms.
“Having all these different rooms allows us to be flexible,” Anderson said. “I can turn that feral cat room into a moms and kittens room.”
Dogs also have a new housing situation.
At the old shelter, they lived in a large barn enclosure, which had five rows that held about 45 total dogs. The dogs were close together — so if one dog started barking, they all started barking.
“One dog in one row starts barking, it sets the whole place off,” Anderson said. That constant agitation wasn’t great for their mental health, he noted.
Now, each dog has its own stall with indoor and outdoor access. The dogs have more space and privacy, which eases their anxiety, Anderson said. There’s also an outdoor, fenced-in courtyard where they dogs can play and meet prospective owners.
Anderson said he’s excited about the shelter’s new amenities, which give the animals a higher quality of life.
“The physical and the mental health of the animals, I’m just really excited that we can provide that,” he said.
The shelter also includes a room for small animals, such as guinea pigs, rabbits and even two chinchillas. On the other side of the shelter, reptiles are held in temperature-controlled enclosures, a significant improvement from the last shelter, where they kept snakes in buckets with hot rocks and heat lamps.
The shelter also plans to build a four-to-six-stall barn between now and next summer. They currently house livestock in an open field, he said, and they usually get a few horses every year. In 2018, they seized 37 horses from a ranch in North County, seeing a total of 55 to 57 horses that year.
“You never know what you’re going to get,” Anderson said. “If you get a couple of cows, you can’t quite put them in a tupperware or somebody’s office.”
Shelter layout improves workflow
The shelter receives animals in two ways: County residents drop off animals they can no longer care for or that they found on the street, or Animal Services picks up stray animals in the field, he said.
Once an animal enters the shelter, they are vaccinated, photographed for the website, microchipped, and moved into housing while they wait to be adopted. The building is designed with this workflow in mind, with the animal intake room leading directly to a room where vaccinations are given. Down the hall, there’s a medical room, quarantine rooms, a room for grooming and more.
Typically, dogs stay at the shelter for 10 days, and cats for 18 to 20 days. Stray animals are held for five days until they can be adopted out, whereas animals surrendered by owners can be adopted immediately, Anderson said.
The new shelter also has a room for euthanizing animals, which is done when animals are ill or aggressive, according to Anderson. Animals taken to the shelter have a 93% live outcome rate, meaning 9 out of 10 animals are adopted, he said.
“As long as an animal is physically healthy and temperamentally sound, we’ll keep them until we find them a home,” Anderson said.
At the old shelter, euthanizing was done in a general task room that was also used for folding laundry and washing dishes.
“It was really a dismal area,” Anderson said. “That presents a psychological depression for the animals and staff.”
The new room is quiet, well-lit and dedicated to euthanizing in order to create a comfortable experience for the animals and staff, Anderson said.
The shelter also has its own medical center, equipped to offer shelter animals minor procedures like dental work or treating an abscess, Anderson said. The shelter will still send animals next door to Woods Humane Society for spays and neuters, and will rely on veterinarians for more intense procedures like fixing broken legs, he said.
Down the hall, the shelter offers visitation rooms where folks can meet potential pets one-on-one.
The shelter is open to the public every day from 1 to 5 p.m. Folks can visit the animals during open hours, or they can call 805-781-4400 to make an appointment to meet individual animals, Anderson said.
Cats can be adopted for $81, dogs for $148, small pets and birds for $5, and exotic animals or livestock for $75, according to the animal services website.
This story was originally published September 20, 2022 at 1:10 PM.
