Irvine Animal Care Center

The staff at this shelter could improve their approach when community members come in trying to help animals. A recent visit involved someone attempting to reunite a mother dog with her puppies after they were found separately. Despite providing photos, timestamps, and proof of the situation, the process became frustrating due to repeated questioning and difficulty getting the situation understood. While it’s understandable that the shelter must follow policies about accepting animals from specific cities, the experience could have been handled with more empathy and smoother communication. Helping reunite a dog family should be a collaborative effort, not a stressful one. In the end, the mother dog needed to be transferred to another facility, but the situation highlighted how important

The shelter is going through many upgrades. It wasn't easy to view the available dogs. Staff was nice to bring the dogs out, but it would have been ideal to spend time inside with the pets. None worked out for us.

We've adopted two cats from here over the last 20 years. One cat long, long ago and he was our whole world. He lived till be 18 years old. We waited 2 years to adopt again to let our hearts grieve that horrible loss. We walked into Irvine Animal shelter one day to just "look" and we fell in love with Stede (we call him Steady now). He took total control of our hearts the first day we saw him. He was recovering from a little mishap and being neutered. He had this big old cone on and wasn't even available for adoption yet. We didn't care, we were going to wait forever for him. We went every day to give him some love, praying and hoping we could adopt him. And we are so grateful we did. He is our best friend. We knew he wanted a little brother so we waited about 6 months and adopted Waffles (

I adopted Spike in March 2015 and have since returned for his nail "free for life" nail clippings. Everyone is helpful and very nice. I frequent the website as well to see the new comers or older patrons. I was happy to hear they will take donations of canned food and linens as well.

Great place. We just adopted a kitten. The staff are fantastic. The place is amazing. The animals are well taken care of and their interview process is good. I would highly recommend stopping by. If you can handle the responsibility, having an animal will definitely make you happier. Kudos to the staff here.