More than 1,500 dogs and cats were looking for homes in Houston, Texas, over the weekend of 7–8 November 2026, as shelters and rescue organisations from across the state gathered for one of the region’s largest pet adoption events. On Sunday, 8 November, adoption fees were waived entirely — meaning families could take a pet home for free, subject to the usual screening and approval.
The event, called Jump Into Joy, was hosted by the nonprofit Petco Love at Reliant Arena in Houston’s NRG Park complex, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday. Adoption fees were $50 on Saturday, 7 November, and completely waived on Sunday, 8 November. Among the participating organisations were Harris County Pets, Fort Bend County Animal Services and Montgomery County Animal Services, three agencies serving communities across greater Houston.
A national weekend for adoption
The Houston event was part of Petco Love’s national pet adoption weekend on 7–8 November 2026, held in partnership with Warner Bros. Pictures Animation and featuring characters from the new animated film The Cat in the Hat, which opened in cinemas on 6 November. Shelters across the country took part, including the Cat Adoption Team in Sherwood, Oregon, which had dozens of adoptable cats and kittens available at its shelter on both days.
Petco Love identified 24 participating animal welfare organisations for the Houston event alone, representing communities across greater Houston and other parts of Texas. The scale of the gathering — more than 1,500 animals in one arena — made it one of the biggest adoption events the region has seen, and the free-adoption Sunday was designed to remove the last barrier for families who were ready to adopt but had been put off by the cost.
Why weekends like this matter
Shelters in Texas, as in much of the United States, are overcrowded, and adoption events are one of the fastest ways to move animals into homes. A fee waiver does not mean standards are waived: normal screening and approval requirements still applied in Houston. What the waiver does is make the decision easier for families who are ready — and for the animals, a home found on a Sunday is a kennel freed for the next animal that needs one.
A weekend that keeps giving
Events like Jump Into Joy are measured not only in adoptions on the day, but in the animals that find homes in the weeks that follow, as families who met a pet at the event come back to adopt, and as the publicity brings new visitors to shelters across the state. For the more than 1,500 dogs and cats at Reliant Arena, the weekend of 7–8 November was a chance to be seen by thousands of people in one place — and for many of them, the start of a new life in a new home.
