Best Friends Animal Society is teaming up with more than 400 shelter and rescue partners across the country including 44 across Texas for its third nationwide adoption campaign in six months to encourage people to choose to adopt, not buy, their next pet.
The adoption campaign will be held Sept. 16-18, and animal shelters in the Rio Grande Valley participating in the event are Humane Society of Harlingen and Palm Valley Animal Society in Edinburg. according to a news release from Best Friends Animal Society.
Many of the shelters and rescue groups that are participating will be waiving or reducing adoption fees over the three-day weekend, the release stated.
Best Friends Animal Society is a leading animal welfare organization working to end the killing of cats and dogs in America’s shelters by 2025.
Recent data released by Best Friends showed that U.S. shelters were seeing an increase in animal intakes and a decrease in pet adoptions from shelters. This has steadily turned into a crisis in the animal welfare community, where many shelters are over capacity.
According to the data, in 2021, around 355,000 dogs and cats were killed in shelters just because they didn’t have safe places to call home and Texas ranked number one in the country for pet shelter deaths.
“There is a growing shelter crisis across the country and the animal welfare community won’t just sit by and let innocent pets die,” said Julie Castle, CEO of Best Friends Animal Society. “In fact, it’s quite the opposite. We’re joining forces with our vast network of shelters and rescues across the country to host our third National Adoption Weekend since May to incentivize people to get out and adopt.”
For more information on adoption events happening in the Valley, contact the Harlingen Humane Society at (956) 425-7297 and Palm Valley Animal Society at (956) 720-4563.
