{"id":259543,"date":"2026-04-09T15:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T15:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/259543\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T15:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T15:58:12","slug":"how-many-sacramento-dogs-and-cats-are-adopted-euthanized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/259543\/","title":{"rendered":"How many Sacramento dogs and cats are adopted, euthanized?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SAC_IAM_240613_SHELTER_2250.jpeg\"   width=\"1140\" height=\"641\" title=\"Kittens at Front Street Animal Shelter in Sacramento on June 13, 2024.\" alt=\"Kittens at Front Street Animal Shelter in Sacramento on June 13, 2024.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>        Kittens at Front Street Animal Shelter in Sacramento on June 13, 2024.<\/p>\n<p>                Hector Amezcua<\/p>\n<p>                                                  <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775750291_65_SAC_IAM_240613_SHELTER_2250.jpeg\"   width=\"1140\" height=\"758\" title=\"SAC_IAM_240613_SHELTER_2250\" alt=\"Kittens at Front Street Animal Shelter in Sacramento on June 13, 2024. Data show that most animals at the shelter are placed in a permanent home.\"\/>                                                                                    Kittens at Front Street Animal Shelter in Sacramento on June 13, 2024. Data show that most animals at the shelter are placed in a permanent home.                                                                                            Hector Amezcua                                                                                                                <\/p>\n<p>A majority of dogs and cats who wind up at the Front Street Animal Shelter are adopted or returned to their owners, records from 2025 show.<\/p>\n<p>A small handful of Houdinis last year escaped foster care, including Nala the pug, Charlie the stray cat, a Rottweiler operating as General Gator and a white lapdog: Toast.<\/p>\n<p>The data \u2014 published on <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"Follow nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/data.cityofsacramento.org\/\">Sacramento\u2019s Open Data Portal<\/a> \u2014 show that the shelter had more than 10,000 intakes of pets last year. Of those, just under half of the animals were adopted. Another 1,700 intakes \u2014 about 17% of the total \u2014 resulted in pets being returned to their owners. The shelter made over 1,000 transfers to other rescue organizations.<\/p>\n<p>Front Street had more dogs coming in last year than cats. Only around 40% of the animals were feline. The data showed dogs and cats were equally likely to get adopted. Likewise, over half of the animals picked up as strays were dogs. That may be due in part to the fact that people are more likely to contact the authorities over a loose dog, while a roaming cat is often let out intentionally.<\/p>\n<p>Happily, close to two-thirds of stray pets ended up getting adopted or returned to their owners.<\/p>\n<p>A little over 20% of the strays were euthanized. Almost all the animals euthanized in 2025 had behavioral or health issues, including biting, aggression or contagious diseases that presented a danger to other pets in the shelter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPit bull\u201d was the most commonly assigned dog breed. More than 1,500 intakes were recorded in 2025. About 80% of those animals were adopted, returned to their owners or transferred to another rescue agency, while around 18% were euthanized.<\/p>\n<p>Among dog breeds with more than 100 intakes recorded in 2025, some had notably high success rates. Over 90% of miniature poodles, shorthair Chihuahuas, French bulldogs, terriers and labs were adopted, returned to their owners or transferred to another rescue agency.<\/p>\n<p>The dataset did not assign a name to every animal. But some of the stars were Tutti Frutti (German shepherd, adopted); Grapes (another German shepherd, adopted); Catfinated Beverage (orange tabby, adopted); Beep Beep (Australian cattle dog, adopted); Spatula (whippet, adopted); and Lawn Mower the French bulldog (adopted).<\/p>\n<p class=\"summary gray\">This story was originally published April 9, 2026 at 7:00 AM.<\/p>\n<p>        Related Stories from  Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n<p>                <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/profile\/254045753\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n                        <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"author-thumb\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/ariane_headshot_-449.jpeg\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" alt=\"Profile Image of Ariane Lange\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><br \/>\n                    <\/a><\/p>\n<p>                <a class=\"author-name\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/profile\/254045753\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ariane Lange<\/a><\/p>\n<p>                    The Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n<p>            Ariane Lange is an investigative reporter at The Sacramento Bee. She was a USC Center for Health Journalism 2023 California Health Equity Fellow. Previously, she worked at BuzzFeed News, where she covered gender-based violence and sexual harassment.\n            <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kittens at Front Street Animal Shelter in Sacramento on June 13, 2024. Hector Amezcua Kittens at Front Street&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-259543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}