In 2024, animal shelters all across South Florida experienced overcrowding. They were receiving too many pets and not enough of them were being adopted. Shelters across the country continue to struggle with an overflow of pets.
Broward County Animal Care was one of those shelters. The overflow of dogs made it difficult to provide them with medical treatment or rehabilitation.
During the 2025 fiscal year from Oct. 1, 2024 to Sept. 30, 2025, 3,894 pets were adopted. That’s an increase of more than 160 animals compared to last year.
Last year brought sweeping changes and improvements to BCAC.
Doug Brightwell, the animal shelter’s director, said they focused on improving their internal services, which help facilitate their return-to-owner programs and rescue partnerships. Those are the two main avenues other than adoption for the animals to leave the facility.
They increased their return-to-owner rate of lost pets, which is the rate at which they get pets to their original owners. Their rate went up to over 17% for dogs, with 568 pets being reunited with their owners.
Brightwell said that, like everybody else in the country, they are still seeing a higher intake of dogs and cats that they have to take in and provide services for than they’d like.
READ MORE: Broward County's animal shelter remains overflowing with cats, dogs
“ You've gotta get the animals flowing out as they're flowing in, or you just stagnate,” Brightwell said. "Our dogs were staying with us over a month and now they're staying with us on average about 20 and a half days, which is a significant reduction.”
When WLRN last spoke to BCAC in June 2024, they were sheltering a dog for almost two years that is now living in Ohio.
Constant community support is an important part of the success they’ve seen. Not only have adoption rates gone up, but they’ve had more volunteers fostering pets for a few days, doing hands-on work and participating in their Broward Buddies program.
“ It’s the day out program for dogs, where you can come in and take a dog out just for the day to spend time with it, help it get more socialized, give it a break from the shelter for the day,” Brightwell said.
The strides made in 2025 haven’t fully eliminated the challenges BCAC faces going into 2026. Even though they’ve seen more community engagement and adoption, they still face being overcapacity day to day, especially with dogs.
“ We try to work with folks who have found strays … and provide resources before they come in so they don't have to bring those animals in,” Brightwell said. “Because if we're full and we're over capacity, we can't provide the assistance for those dogs trying to come in.”
