Crowded Stockton Animal Shelter Giving Away Pit Bulls

STOCKTON (CBS13) — The Stockton Animal Shelter is filled to capacity, and now it's giving away pit bulls for free.

It was Desmond's lucky day on Thursday. He was just adopted by a family looking specifically for a pit bull.

"We've been thinking about getting a dog for awhile now," Tiffany Tong said. "We actually have another pitbull. It was perfect to come get one from here, because we saw that it was overcrowded."

They saw the shelter's plea on Facebook to help find homes for nearly 200 dogs.

Since shelter manager Phillip Zimmerman took over in January, euthanizations have dropped. But saving animals' lives comes with an unintended consequence.

"Our goal here is not to generate revenue. Our goal here is to save lives," he said.

With the shelter at maximum capacity, Zimmerman says he had to get creative, so all pit bull adoptions are now free.

"How much you pay for a dog does not make you a good or bad owner," he said.

But how is the shelter ensuring the dogs end up in the right hands, and aren't eventually ending back up on the streets.

"If people are taking the time to come to the shelter and look for an animal when they can just as easily go to Craigslist, we have to believe that they're going to provide a good home," he said.

The shelter has a 5 percent return rate, which is low, and the dogs leave the shelter spayed or neutered, and microchipped and licensed.

"And if they do get out, they end up back here, we know who to contact and we know where they came from," he said.

Stockton