They may not understand climate change, but the 135 dogs housed at Miami-Dade’s overflow animal shelter are feeling the heat.
The shelter, which doesn’t have air conditioning, is in the city of Medley, which recorded maximum temperatures of more than 90 degrees during 20 of the 31 days in May.
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"The Medley facility is an open-air facility. It was designed that way. There's actually a great breeze, but as we know, these summer months are very hot. Today, we're experiencing temperatures over 100 degrees," said Annette Jose, director of Miami-Dade Animal Services.
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Barbara Rodriguez is a concerned citizen who contacted the NBC6 Responds team asking for help for the dogs as the summer heat approaches.
“These animals need help and they need help now,” she said.
Rodriguez said volunteers at the shelter have been “doing all they can,” giving the dogs iced water and using cooling mats.
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Only in Dade shared the shelter volunteers' efforts, calling for help and donations for the dogs and saying industrial fans were needed — and the community sprang into action.
The Kentucky-based company said they immediately stepped up, donating four industrial-sized fans.
“Volunteers and members of the community tagged us hundreds of times ... we received messages and DMs asking us to do anything that we could to help,” said Chloe Bates, the social media administrator for Big Ass Fans.
“They’ve been proven to lower the temperature by about 33 degrees,” Bates said.
The county said they’re grateful for the fans and other donations they received from the public as they will help cool the dogs off during the hot summer, but it doesn’t solve their overpopulation problem.
“The reason we're here is because in 2020, when we were all shut down, we stopped doing spay and neuter services," Jose said. "We thought the right thing to do was to allow the hospitals to use the PPE … so that one to two-year pause in spay and neuter surgeries is what we're seeing now. That's why we have so many dogs in the community."
To try to tackle the overpopulation problem, the county said they’ve allocated an extra $2 million of the budget to spay and neuter animals. The money was supposed to be used to build an animal sanctuary, but those plans were scrapped after a feasibility study.
"It took us three to four years to get here. It's going to take some time with an enormous amount of spay and neuter surgeries to get control on that population," Jose said.
In the meantime, Animal Services continues to promote adoptions with events like NBC and Telemundo’s Clear the Shelters campaign. “The dogs here don't belong in a shelter. They belong in a home, so please open your hearts, your homes, for the dogs here, so that we can empty this shelter once and for all."
Barbara Rodriguez makes the same call to the community but also asks the county to do more, like offer more than just one adoption event a month in Medley.
“What we're seeing is that we're not getting as much adoptions happening on that day as we would like," Jose said. "So what we really need is for everyone to be very aware of the dogs that are here, come and visit them. If you want to meet one of the dogs because you see it online, call us. We will make it happen."
The next adoption event in Medley is June 15. As always, fees will be waived. To see a list of all of the adoption events the County has planned, click here.
