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Shelter Offers Anniversary Special Adoptions Just $5 All Week

May 7, 2015

TUESDAY, MAY 5, 2015 – Five years ago this week Riverside County opened a new animal shelter. To mark that anniversary, Riverside County Animal Services is offering pet adoptions all week long for just $5.

All dogs and cats are just five bucks through Saturday, May 9. It was on Saturday, May 8, 2010, when the doors finally opened on the newly constructed animal shelter at 6851 Van Buren Blvd., in what is now the incorporated city of Jurupa Valley. Tens of thousands of adoptions have occurred since that grand-opening celebration.

The almost 12-acre shelter campus replaced an aging building on Wilderness Avenue in the city of Riverside. That building was never designed to house an animal shelter.

The $5 pet special includes the adoption fee (normally $105 for dogs and $15 for cats) but still comes with all the regular bells-and-whistles items: the pet’s spay or neuter surgery, vaccinations and a microchip. One key note: If the adopter lives within Riverside County’s service areas, a $16 dog license must be purchased.

To help us celebrate the five-year anniversary of the shelter, the Department of Animal Services is asking anyone who has adopted from the main shelter to send in a photo of their pet to [email protected] and share a brief adoption story. We’d love to know the pet’s name (and current age), when the pet was adopted (month/year) and what the family loves about the adopted animal.

Those who submit a pet photo and story should put “ANNIVERSARY ADOPTION STORY” in the subject line. And anyone who does submit a photo and short story will have their name entered in opportunity drawings for a limited number of free T-shirts and other prizes.

The animal shelter on Van Buren Boulevard includes 63,000 square feet of air-conditioned space and 11 buildings. The shelter is separated between adoptable pets and animals that are strays, waiting for their owners to redeem them. All told, there are 224 indoor/outdoor kennel runs.

The shelter was also designed with a new veterinary clinic that handles all the spay-and-neuter surgeries of adoptable pets. Surgeries of owned pets are also performed in the clinic at a low cost to encourage all pet owners to consider getting their pets fixed. A barn area – something that was not available at the old shelter – was designed with six corrals to hold horses and other livestock.