Irvine : Animals Face Feb. 15 Adoption Deadline

Polo, a year-old shepherd mix, and 18 other dogs and a cat at the Irvine Animal Care Center face death if they are not adopted by Feb. 15, under the shelter’s new time limits.

The city policy, which went into effect Jan. 1, requires that animals not adopted within 45 days be put to death. In the past, animal services officials only killed animals when the shelter became too crowded, animal health technician Mike Igoe said. The animals usually are killed with a lethal injection of pentothal sodium, he said.

The City Council adopted the time-limit policy because of “economic reasons,” he said. “It’s kind of ludicrous to ask the citizens of Irvine to keep an animal alive 60, 90 days and then it might be euthanized anyway.”

Still, Igoe said, the 45-day stay is “by far the longest length of time that any agency gives an animal.”

The animals facing the deadline include Polo, who likes a quiet atmosphere and seems to be a good pet for a family with older children, according to Kathy Rosevear, vice president of The Friends of the Irvine Animal Care Center, a volunteer group that helps care for the animals at the center. Another is Wigley, a neutered pit bull mix who is “happy to be with people . . . as his name implies,” she said.

The city animal services operation moved into its new $2.8-million headquarters on Sand Canyon Avenue last spring from its former site on Laguna Canyon Road in Laguna Beach. When construction is completed, the shelter will be able to house 110 dogs and 50 cats, Igoe said. It now can hold 30 dogs and 4 cats.

Like most animal shelters, Igoe said, Irvine’s tends to becomes overcrowded during the summer months.

All is not gloomy for the animals, however. The Friends of the Irvine Animal Care Center has begun operating four dog kennels at the center, where some dogs can be kept “for a while longer” after the 45-day deadline passes, Rosevear said.

The 50-member group, which assists the center in such tasks as exercising the animals, pays the city $10 per week for each kennel. The actual cost is $30 per week per kennel, Rosevear said.

The Friends’ kennels are intended as places for dogs who have passed the 45-day deadline and are healthy and adoptable, she said.