Irving Animal Care Campus Group Tours
Would you and your group like to tour the new Irving Animal Care Campus? We would love to show you all that it has to offer.Pre-schedule visits 2 to 4 weeks in advance (depends upon the availability of our volunteers) Saturdays are best because we have more volunteers available, but we can sometimes accommodate a weekday (all our volunteers work full time in other industries)
Each child and adult must have a completed Liability Waiver -- available here.
Because all pet handling at our shelter requires specific 4-hour volunteer training (and for that, minors must have their legal guardians present at all times during and after training), we do not have groups help with the animals.
Please allow 45-60 minutes for your visit.
Please indicate a particular date you prefer, so that we can determine if a tour guide is available.
Note we are closed Sunday and Monday.
Earliest tour visit start is 11:30am. - depending on availability of our volunteers
Latest tour visit start is 4:00pm - depending on availability of our volunteers
The following applies to groups of young children. The tour guide will:
1. Divide the children into groups of 7-10 children.
2. Conduct a basic pet care talk with the kids, and we typically use a pup or young dog to demonstrate how to gently pet, etc. We will let the children take turns with a bit of petting while the pet stays in the hands of the volunteer.
3. Take the children to meet the dogs and let them gently pet some of the dogs under the supervision of our volunteers
4. Take the kids to meet the cats and let them pet cats that are being held by our volunteer
5. Rotate small groups of kids so that none of the pets get overwhelmed by having too many children in one area at a time. This also enables the kids to get more information from the volunteer and have a more enjoyable time with the pets.