Del Rio Animal Control on Track to Becoming a ‘No-Kill’ Shelter
Updated: Aug 22, 2025
Del Rio AC Commits to No-Kill & How Del Rio Animals Are Finding Homes Hundreds of Miles Away
To be considered a ‘no kill’ shelter, there’s a magic threshold: save 90% of the animals. Del Rio Animal Control (DRAC) has long gotten a bad rap for euthanization rates being a far cry from no-kill status. However, a new culture of collaboration and networking is being fostered in the department in recent years, helping connect them to nationwide rescue organizations — and the results will inspire you. So far in 2025, DRAC has managed an 83% save rate. Through these connections, at-risk animals from Del Rio are being re-located as far away as Minnesota for a second-chance at life.
A Success Story
This is Big Mike.
According to Austin Pets Alive! (APA!), a rescue organization in Austin that DRAC has partnered with, Big Mike’s story begins in Del Rio. He arrived to DRAC’s shelter at a time when it was at capacity. Then, a large mass was found on Big Mike’s back that doctors suspected might be cancer. Big Mike was facing the odds on his life. But Del Rio’s animal control officers (ACOs) refused to give up on him.
Because of DRAC’s relationship with APA!, who also serve as an animal transport hub, Big Mike was moved to a shelter willing to take him in. This shelter even crowdfunded the costs of medical care to successfully remove his mass, which turned out to not be cancerous. Big Mike’s upward trajectory would eventually take him (fittingly) north to Wadena Humane Society in Minnesota, another rescue partner of APA!’s, where he rests healthy and comfortably in a foster home. Northern states are experiencing an problem inverse to ours: many pet-less homes, according to APA’s Clare Callison.
Stories like Big Mike’s are quickly becoming more common for animals in Del Rio. But it’s not without some boots on the ground.
The Advocates
Over the last few years, a shift has begun. Community members have started taking action on behalf of the animals in a number of ways. From organizing a local foster network, to connecting DRAC’s animals to a nationwide network of rescue shelters through hours-long transportation road trips, local advocates are giving Del Rio’s un-homed animals a chance like never before.
Amanda Sicilia is one such volunteer advocate who has played a pivotal role in transforming the shelter’s save rate. Amanda moved here with her spouse, an Air Force airman, from Miami in 2022. But when she arrived, she noticed a problem.
“Coming over here and seeing all these animals in need was really tugging at my heart strings.”
Amanda says that relative to what she’s seen elsewhere in the world, Del Rio is facing an “animal crisis”, and she decided that the only way she could feel better about what she saw was to cause a change herself.
“I found two dogs on the road and I fostered. And I wanted to do more than just foster. I wanted to get more involved because the city needed it. And that’s when I got into animal control here, volunteering, and started taking more of a role,” Amanda explains.
Amanda now wears many hats. “I foster, I do heart-worm tests, I’ve vaccinated, I weigh, I do temperament testing, take pictures, respond to emails, I transport. I met a woman who asked me to volunteer here in transport and it’s really changed my life.”
I met Amanda outside DRAC’s animal shelter on a day when a transport was happening. Transports are what connect animals in Del Rio to a fullness of rehoming opportunities throughout the rest of the United States. Shelter animals are loaded into a vehicle and driven, often by volunteers, to a meeting point, sometimes as far as Austin, to hand them off to Austin Pets Alive! On this occasion DRAC was transporting 12 dogs, including 9 puppies found abandoned in a box, to Castroville, Texas where APA! had arranged to meet them halfway.
Amanda has done her share of driving animals out of Del Rio over the years, and says this partnership has revolutionized how DRAC relates to their animals.
“Ever since their partnership, they have been able to save more dogs [and cats], so they have felt more comfortable making bonds with these [animals] knowing there’s a chance for them,” she explains. “Before, when [animals] would come in, they would just be numbers. Now they’re given names, and they’re walked, they are loved on, and played with.”
Aracely Newman is a volunteer animal fosterer and associate of AARC, or Animal Advocacy & Rescue Coalition, a local rescue. Aracely says she’s been fostering “non-stop” since she moved to Del Rio from Virginia in 2021. She tells a story similar to Amanda’s about recognizing a problem upon arriving.
“I started noticing the amount of dogs that are loose in the area, or dumped, or surrendered. And I just had to do something about it,” she tell DRN. “[Fostering] is truly rewarding, because you are truly saving lives.” Fostering prevents euthanization and creates more space in DRAC’s shelter, she says.
Once a path forward is found for an animal in foster care, they converge at the DRAC facility at 203 Ave P for a transport out of town. This process is able to happen because DRAC communicates the status of the animals in their care constantly with their network of rescues and collaborators outside of Del Rio.
The Network
Del Rio Animal Services and Austin Pets Alive! share an active mentor-mentee relationship. Which means that on top of transporting animals from Del Rio and re-homing them through their network of rescues and shelters, APA! also engages Del Rio’s ACOs by advising them on animal care practices and procedures with the goal of achieving that 90% save rate.
This relationship is funded by the Shelter Collaborative, a program sponsored by Best Friends Animal Society, a leading animal welfare organization founded in 1984 in Utah. The Shelter Collaborative pairs shelters that have achieved no-kill status with shelters that are working towards no-kill.
Clare Callison, Senior Director of Care Operations at Austin Pets Alive!, who have achieved no-kill, says they were initially acquainted with Del Rio Animal Services through Amanda Sicilia’s advocacy, and that eventually turned into a more official partnership.
“We get a lot of people who will reach out to APA! to alert us if a shelter is struggling or seemingly has no resources and could use help,” Clare says. That was 4 years ago, and APA! has since elected to work more closely with Del Rio in particular.
“We made our partnership a little more official when we started working with a national organization called the Best Friends Animal Society. They fund us in order to save more lives from the Del Rio shelter.”
“We strengthened and deepened our relationship in the last two years. There are so many shelters in Texas, but we picked about 20 to really focus on intensively to […] make a more tangible impact. Del Rio is just pretty isolated; it’s pretty far away. And that posed a big challenge for the shelter to get help.
“We really wanted to choose shelters that are seemingly left behind,” Clare explains.
“We’re touching base weekly. Every month we do a data report with them where we can transparently see what progress they’ve made and where there biggest challenges are so that we can step up to fill those gaps.”
With partnerships that lend access to both valuable knowledge and resources to boost their animal saving rates, a new chapter has begun at Del Rio Animal Services.
The Future
DRAC manager Alletse Santos, who began as an Animal Control Officer in 2019, says she remembers a time when save rates at their facility were as low as 10%.
“I think we were euthanizing almost like at 90%, if I’m not mistaken.”
But now that she’s in charge, DRAC has committed to becoming no-kill.
“I think a lot of people think a little bit negatively [about DRAC]. I think they don’t see all the extra stuff that we’re doing now, to get the animals [into homes]. That’s exactly what we try to do. Our number one purpose is never to euthanize,” says Santos to DRN.
On DRAC’s committment, Callison says, “There are many shelters in Texas that didn’t want anything to do with a commitment to no-kill or 90%, but Del Rio said they were committed and wanted to do everything that they could to get there.”
Del Rio Animal Services says there are always volunteer opportunities to help them reach their 90% save-rate goal, like fostering and transporting. Spaying and neutering helps control the stray animal population to more manageable levels. Alletse encourages all pet owners to spay and neuter.
Connect with DRAC online via Facebook.
.png)
Comments