Pets

For San Antonio residents who have been thinking about adopting a dog or cat, Labor Day weekend may offer an especially affordable opportunity to bring one home.

San Antonio Animal Care Services is offering $25 pet adoptions through Sunday, Sept. 6, giving families a chance to meet hundreds of dogs and cats currently waiting at the city shelter at 4710 State Highway 151. The promotion begins Friday, Sept. 4, and runs through the weekend before the shelter closes Monday, Sept. 7, for the City of San Antonio’s Labor Day observance.

Beyond the reduced adoption fee, the weekend also gives residents an opportunity to help create space at San Antonio’s municipal animal shelter — whether by adopting, fostering or simply sharing information about animals that need homes.

A New Way to Find the Right Dog in San Antonio

Choosing a shelter pet can be exciting, but walking through rows of kennels can also leave prospective adopters wondering which animal might best fit their household.

Animal Care Services is now offering a new option called “Fetch a Friend,” a shelter-based matchmaking quiz designed to narrow the search.

Visitors can scan a QR code at the shelter and answer questions about their lifestyle, preferences and personality. The tool then produces a customized list of available dogs whose needs and characteristics may align with the adopter’s answers. From there, visitors can head to the kennels and meet their suggested matches in person.

It is a lighthearted approach to a serious consideration: finding a pet whose activity level, temperament and needs can work with a family’s everyday routine.

Adoptions remain first-come, first-served, and no online adoption applications are accepted. Animal Care Services encourages prospective adopters to meet the animal before completing the adoption process.

What San Antonio Animal Care Services Does Beyond Adoptions

For many residents, Animal Care Services may be most familiar as the place where stray dogs and cats are taken or adopted. Its responsibilities, however, reach considerably further into everyday life across San Antonio.

Animal Care Services describes itself as the largest open-admission municipal animal shelter in South Texas, operating from a 14-acre campus. Its stated mission is to encourage responsible pet ownership while protecting the health, safety and welfare of both residents and animals through education, enforcement and community partnerships.

The department handles pet adoptions and sheltering while also providing or coordinating programs that include low-cost vaccinations, spay and neuter services, microchipping, foster care, community education and volunteer opportunities.

Its field officers also respond to issues involving suspected animal cruelty, bites, injured animals, roaming dogs, livestock concerns and other animal-related public safety matters within San Antonio city limits.

Education is another piece of the department’s work. ACS outreach staff provide programs on responsible pet ownership, animal-bite prevention and other topics in schools, neighborhood associations and community settings throughout San Antonio.

Together, those programs make the shelter more than an adoption center. It also serves as one of the city’s primary points of contact when animals, neighborhoods and public safety intersect.

Adoption and Foster Placements Are Playing a Growing Role

The Labor Day adoption event comes during a year in which San Antonio Animal Care Services has reported gains in several measures of shelter placement.

In an analysis released in May, ACS reported an 89.6% overall placement rate for the first half of fiscal year 2026, compared with 86.4% during the same period a year earlier. That figure includes outcomes such as adoptions, rescue transfers, reunions with owners and trap-neuter-return placements for community cats.

The department also reported that adoptions had increased 20.7% and foster placements had increased 18.1% year over year during that period.

Those numbers also help explain why adoption and foster promotions appear regularly on the shelter’s calendar. When animals leave for permanent or temporary homes, kennel space becomes available for additional pets arriving at the open-admission shelter.

That need has been especially visible at several points in 2026. In June and July, Animal Care Services issued appeals for emergency fosters and adopters when kennels neared capacity amid weather-related animal intake and other large-scale impounds.

Not Ready to Adopt? Fostering Offers Another Way to Help

A permanent adoption is not the right choice for every household, and ACS is also encouraging San Antonio residents to consider becoming temporary foster pet parents.

The foster program places animals in homes while they await adoption or transfer to a rescue organization. Animal Care Services provides foster families with supplies such as food, crates and toys as well as needed medical care.

For residents who enjoy having a dog or cat around but are not ready for a years-long commitment, fostering can provide a shorter-term way to help a shelter animal while also opening kennel space for another pet.

Available animals can be viewed through the City of San Antonio’s online pet search before residents make the trip to the shelter.

What San Antonio Residents Need to Know This Weekend

San Antonio Animal Care Services is located at 4710 State Highway 151, San Antonio, TX 78227.

The shelter is open for adoptions from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Adoption processing ends 30 minutes before closing. Walk-ins are accepted and appointments are not required.

The $25 Labor Day weekend pet adoption special ends Sunday, Sept. 6. The shelter will be closed Monday, Sept. 7, for Labor Day. Standard adoption policies still apply, and pets are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

For San Antonio families already considering pet adoption, the weekend could be a chance to meet an animal that has been waiting for exactly that kind of introduction. For everyone else, sharing an adoptable pet or considering a foster placement can still help move another dog or cat one step closer to a home.

Stay tuned to My Neighborhood News for more San Antonio community events, pet adoption opportunities and local resources for families and pet owners.

By Tiffany Krenek, My Neighborhood News 

Tiffany Krenek has been on the My Neighborhood News team since August 2021. She is passionate about curating and sharing content that enriches the lives of our readers in a personal, meaningful way. A loving mother and wife, Tiffany and her family live in the West Houston/Cypress region.