It’s easy to feel that working with stray and abandoned animals is an impossible task. The good news – and what keeps us feeling optimistic – is that we are part of thousands of success stories every year.

When animals are lost, we work very hard to find their owners. Last year, we reunited almost 1000 dogs and cats with their worried families. When owners don’t claim their animals, or when owners relinquish their pets to the shelter, we find adoptable animals loving new homes.

Working Together

If we can’t find a home for a cat or dog, we work very closely with a network of shelters and rescue groups in Oregon and southwest Washington that may be able to help. We have many placement partners that work with us to rehabilitate and find homes for dogs and cats. Unlike most animal shelters that take in stray animals, every healthy unclaimed animal that comes to our shelter finds an adoptive home. Most of the animals that have medical and behavioral problems also find loving homes through our adoption program or through our rescue partners. We like to say that if you are a stray animal, you are very lucky to live in Washington County.

We are part of a Portland-area network of shelters that have agreed to the Asilomar Accords. These organizations pledge to work in cooperation with other shelters.

Washington County Animal Services, Multnomah County Animal Services, Oregon Humane Society, Cat Adoption Team, Humane Society for Southwest Washington, and Clackamas County Dog Services meet monthly to work together in a network we call the Animal Shelter Alliance of Portland (ASAP). We work as a team to help each other out when one shelter is full but another shelter has room to take animals. This coalition also provides affordable spay/neuter services for the cats of low-income families. We share knowledge, information, and ideas to help the animals in our community. Working together, the ASAP has pledged that no healthy animal will be euthanized in any animal shelter in the Portland metropolitan area.

Each member of ASAP keeps accurate, careful records of the animals that arrive and leave from our shelters. Those statistics help us chart our progress in saving the lives of animals in our community.

In Washington County we are proud that our live release rates far exceed national averages--and are getting better every year that we've been keeping these statistics.

You can see our statistics for the respective years below

• 2020 statistics
• 2019 statistics
• 2018 statistics
• 2017 statistics
• 2016 statistics
• 2015 statistics
• 2014 statistics
• 2013 statistics
• 2012 statistics
• 2011 statistics
• 2010 statistics
• 2009 statistics
• 2008 statistics

We hope you’ll spend some time learning about us and how we partner with the community to serve the people and pets of Washington County.