We receive many owner surrender inquiries. In order to provide appropriate assistance, we need to be familiar with  your pet’s history as well as your reasons for surrender  We appreciate that your time is valuable and we strive to give you the best possible advice during the initial consultation.

As a private, nonprofit organization dependent on community contributions, we require a continuing care fee for an animal surrendered to us. This fee helps offset the cost of daily feeding and cleaning, veterinary treatment, and behavioral care. Any amount over this fee is greatly appreciated and will help provide care for the thousands of animals we assist each year.

There are many environmental factors why your animal behaves in a certain way, and a lot of behavior can be modified through consistent positive reinforcement training. However, a general rule is that if your pet is challenging enough for you to surrender, it might also be a challenging placement candidate for prospective adopters. In order to help as many as we can, the East Bay SPCA commits only to animals that will cope reasonably in our kennel environment and have a good chance of finding a loving forever home.

Due to the overwhelming number of homeless pets, our shelter routinely operates at or above capacity. While we offer re-homing services for pets and their people in dire need (by appointment only), space may not be available at short notice.

Please contact your local municipal animal shelter.

A trained staff member will perform a series of handling exercises and observe your pet’s responses. While your pet may behave perfectly with you and your family, it may not with strangers or in a new environment. We strive to provide compassionate care to the dogs and cats in our shelter, but living in a shelter can be stressful and re-homing through surrender to a shelter should always be the very last resort.

Sometimes is takes a trained eye and experience to see signs of an on-setting or chronic condition that may be beyond the scope of shelter medicine and/or it would represent a serious deterrent to re-homing. Senior animals face a lot of competition for adopters, as there are many younger, healthy animals also waiting for a home. The “senior screen” gives our veterinarians as well as potential adopter base-line information about your senior pet’s overall health.

We will discuss all potential options with you. Perhaps there are alternatives to surrender, allowing you to either keep or successfully re-home your pet on your own; maybe there is another rescue group that would be more suitable for your pet. We network with many animal care agencies and are familiar with a variety of resources to assist you.