New Facility

Located on 4 acres 25,000 square foot state-of-the-art facility.

The new Yolo County Animal Shelter is a state-of-the art facility serving community needs for providing safe, humane housing of animals. An important goal is to maximize positive outcomes for all adoptable animals. The new 28,000 square foot shelter will replace the existing outdated, undersized shelter and will become a welcoming destination in the community, providing strong outreach and education programs along with expanded services such as public spay and neuter. Using shelter medicine best practices, the new facility will provide high quality housing to promote animal health and prevent the transmission of contagious diseases. A few of the shelter medicine best practices that will be incorporated include double compartment housing for all animals to allow for choice and control within their environment, access to natural daylight and ventilation in all animal areas and acoustic control to minimize stress.

The facility will also be designed to be highly sustainable, incorporating energy saving and water reducing strategies which will lower operating and maintenance costs over time. Animal shelters are energy demanding, expensive facilities. Using sustainable strategies allows for more dollars to be spent where it matters, on improving and supporting best animal care.

The new facility will feature:

• Necessary lifesaving programs and services for the community.
• Appropriately house animals with both short- and long-term care needs and allow Animal Services to modernize and exceed industry best practices such as open and inviting living spaces to better meet the social, physical, and mental needs of animals.
• Disease resistant materials for improved sanitation and animal health.
• Training and education, increasing our involvement with the community and ideally sparking a strong humane social movement in Yolo County.
• House expanded partnerships, including the Yolo County SPCA and the Koret Shelter Medicine Program, providing the next generation of veterinarians with valuable experience in the under-served field of shelter medicine.
• Welcoming design to encourage increased use of services and animal adoptions, as well as change general perceptions of what an animal shelter looks like and what it can do for the community.

Comprehensive Programs and Services

1. Community Cat/Dog Sterilization – Community sterilization, including return-to-field programs humanely reduce impounds and killing.
2. High-Volume, Low-Cost Sterilization – No- and low-cost, high-volume sterilization reduces the number of animals entering the shelter system, allowing more resources to be allocated toward saving lives.
3. Rescue Groups – Adoption or transfer/transport to rescue groups frees up scarce cage and kennel space, reduces expenses for feeding, cleaning, and killing, and improves a community’s rate of lifesaving.
4. Foster Care Volunteer – Volunteer foster care is a low and often no-cost way of, caring for sick and injured or behaviorally challenged animals. It also increases shelter capacity and saves more lives.
5. Comprehensive Adoption Programs – Adoptions are vital to an agency’s lifesaving mission. Shelters must improve the promotion of their animals and implement adoption programs that are more responsive to community needs. These include a welcoming facility, public access hours for working people, offsite adoptions, adoption incentives, and effective marketing
6. Medical & Behavior Programs – To meet its commitment to a lifesaving guarantee for all savable animals, shelters need to keep animals happy and healthy and move them efficiently through the system. Comprehensive vaccination, handling, cleaning, socialization, and care policies before animals get sick as well as rehabilitative efforts for those who come in sick, injured, un-weaned, or traumatized are vital.
7. Public Relations/Community Development – Improving a shelter’s public exposure will increase adoptions, maximize donations, recruit volunteers and expand partnerships with community agencies. Consistent public relations and marketing are the foundation of a shelter’s activities and success.
8. Volunteers – A dedicated “army of compassion,” volunteers are the backbone of a successful No Kill effort. There is never enough funding for adequate staffing,. Volunteers make the difference between life and death.
9. Proactive Redemptions – Effective reclaims of lost animals reduce killing. Shifting from a passive to a more proactive approach has allowed shelters to return a large percentage of lost animals to their families.
10. Pet Retention – While some surrender of animals to shelters is unavoidable; others can be prevented—but only if shelters work with people to help them solve their problems. Saving animals requires shelters to develop innovative strategies for keeping people and their companion animals together.
11. Compassionate Leadership – A system-wide philosophy that embraces current standards of practice make this final element of the No Kill Equation the most important of all.

These programs will be part of our shelter, allowing Yolo County to strive to become a No-Kill community.

ABOUT INDIGO ARCHITECTS

The mission of Indigo Architects is “to integrate art, architecture and ecology, putting people in touch with their environment, each other, and their spiritual and cultural aspirations.”  Jonathan Hammond and Bruce Playle formed Indigo | Hammond & Playle Architects, LLP in 1999 merging over 60 years of combined experience in the field and have brought a fresh new approach to the design and construction of animal shelters.  Our goal is to combine ecological principles with functional design solutions to improve the lives those who use our buildings.

Recent advances in research have identified causes of disease and illness in shelter animals, many of which can be eliminated or substantially reduced through informed design measures.  Indigo embraces new evidence-based research from the scientific community on best practices for the care of animals and to eliminate any conventional practices which have been found to be ineffective or harmful to animal health.  Recognizing the dire need for improved animal shelters in California, Indigo’s designs are dedicated to improving animal health and live release rates, promoting the adoption of animals, providing flexible space, meeting animal needs for care and housing and ensuring efficiency of operations over time.  Shelters are community buildings, as such, we believe strongly that the input received from constituents, stakeholders and those who care for animals in their community is vital to a successful project outcome.