The Sacramento Animal Care Services facility on Front Street rotated dozens of animals and 30 people surrendering pets, filling out missing pet reports and retrieving their animals through the small receiving room on Tuesday.

The shelter handles all of the city's animal-care issues, including cruelty investigations, quarantines and licensing, but it still need help with their own deficiencies.

"We always need volunteers in all areas — clerical, socializing, feeding, adoptions, everything," said animal care services manager Penny Cistaro.

The shelter currently has 175 volunteers, compared to the other three shelters in Sacramento that have over 1000. Their medical care facility and spay/neuter clinic share a small trailer located in the back of the shelter, and despite the high volume of animals received, the available space for animals is scarce.

According to Cistaro, the shelter is not a "no-kill" facility because they perform euthanasia on animals that are deemed to be sick, too young, too old, not adoptable, or there is no space to house them.

"No-kill is just a movement—they are trying to make a point," Cistaro said. "'Kill' makes it sound like we're taking baseball bats and hitting the animals over the head. We perform euthanasia here."

According to Cistaro, to increase the live release rate and make a difference in the animals population, the community needs more resources like strong spay/neuter clinics and behavior programs, and look at the costs of veterinary services and of housing large animals.

"There are food banks for people who can't provide for themselves, but nothing for animals," Cistaro said. "So we opened a pet food bank."

The shelter is teaming up with the County Animal Care and Regulation Center on Bradshaw Road, the Sacramento SPCA on Florin-Perkins and Happy Tails Pet Sanctuary on Folsom Boulevard. Together, they have created "Mission Orange," in hopes of increasing the live release rate in Sacramento and receiving a grant from the ASPCA.

"We need to make this a social problem, not a shelter problem," Cistaro said. "Shelters need to be more proactive."

For more information about the shelter or to volunteer visit the Sacramento Animal Care Services website.

  Katrina

Tabitha

Purrsimmon

Dart

Grace

Forrest

Aspen

Cali

wynter

Awesome Andy

Sully

Jasmine

Callie

Amie

Art

Grover

Sasha