BATON ROUGE — If you’ve been thinking about adopting a pet, now is the perfect time. Several shelters across the area are participating in the Bissell Pet Foundation’s Empty the Shelters event. With shelters nearing capacity, local groups are urging families to consider adoption this weekend, including the Companion Animal Alliance.
“Summertime tends to be the busiest time with the highest intake for pretty much all animal welfare organizations,” said Jen Hollas, Communications and Events Senior Manager for the CAA. “The timing of this event is really important and extremely helpful when it comes to getting down the numbers that we have in our building and getting them out to adopters.”
Empty the Shelters is the nation’s largest funded adoption event, and makes pet adoption affordable for prospective pet owners. “Bissell actually reimburses shelters for a portion of the adoption fees,” Hollas explained. “That’s why so many shelters are actually able to reduce their adoption fees, and that allows more shelters to be able to participate than if those reimbursements weren’t happening.”
You can adopt “ready-to-go” pets at the CAA for $20 through Sunday, July 13. “This event for us is specifically for our animals that are already ready-to-go: spayed and neutered, vaccinated, completely ready,” said Hollas.
The CAA started its Empty the Shelters event on July 5. Since then it’s finalized about 75 ‘ready-to-go’ adoptions, but Hollas said the number may be even higher, since some adopters change plans once they meet the animals…