Our Story
Santa Fe Animal Shelter’s mission is to Support animals, save lives, and spread compassion.
About Us
Since 1939, Santa Fe Animal Shelter has been dedicated to its mission to support animals, save lives, and spread compassion.
The Santa Fe Animal Shelter focuses on accessible spay and neuter programs in an effort to beat animal population at its core. Creative adoption efforts and dozens of programs provide support for marginalized animals and work to place homeless animals into loving families.
Thanks to a partnership with the City of Santa Fe and the Bureau of Land Management, the main Shelter is housed on a 100-acre campus complete with walking trails and play yards for daily enrichment for our Shelter residents, as well as single and multi-use public dog parks.
Come visit our facilities to experience how Santa Fe cares for its animals or take a virtual tour instead. The shelter is not just a place to adopt an animal or to find a missing one, but a place to visit over and over again. This is your shelter, built by this community – a place to find joy with companions.
We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization. Our federal tax ID # is 85-6000484.
History
On July 18, 2005, the Santa Fe Animal Shelter left its home of 66 years—the only home the organization had ever known—and moved to our new, two-building, 100-acre campus. We left a structure that had helped us serve thousands upon thousands of animals for the better part of seven decades. And while that home held so much history and love, the needs of our community meant we needed more.
Thanks to a partnership with the City of Santa Fe and the Bureau of Land management, we moved to a parcel of land with hiking trails, room to walk dogs, and amazing sunsets. After a multi-year fundraising drive, the first phase was completed: two beautiful new buildings in which we can provide a higher level of care to the animals in our community.
The Lapides Adoption Center serves healthy, adoptable animals. Every detail of the new Shelter is designed for the comfort and health of the animals. From the tiled banco in each dog kennel to the spacious, cozy, cat colony rooms; from the radiant floor heating for our four-footed visitors to “cuddle” rooms where potential adopters can visit with an animal in an area designed to simulate a home environment.
The second building, the Robin Sommers Animal Admissions & Care Center, allows us much more room to house stray and abandoned animals as we care for them during their stay with us. High-tech ventilation systems allow us to better control the spread of contagious diseases and to safely treat the animals in our care much more effectively.
A third building, The Clare Eddy Thaw Hospital, was completed in the summer of 2013 and proudly opened to further serve the needs of the community.
The Roddey Burdine Rehabilitation Center opened in May 2015 and is the proud home of our Behavior team, who works one-on-one with traumatized animals.
We welcome you to visit the haven we are providing to the animals of our community. Two five-acre dog parks are available so that the Shelter will not just be a place to adopt an animal or find a missing one, but one to visit over and over again. We have built this Shelter for you, our community, to use as a resource and a place to find joy with the animals. The staff of the Santa Fe Animal Shelter brings years of collective experience in animal welfare and related fields to the Shelter.
