In normal times, he says, “you might get an animal dropped once a week or every couple of weeks. Over one eight-day stretch in mid-August, eight dogs, six kittens, and four guinea pigs were left at the shelter gates after hours. “This is a nationwide challenge right now.” Struggles for pet ownersĪlthough shelter intakes aren’t spiking nationwide, Labriola says more people are bringing animals to PAWS Atlanta.
Nothing happening at PAWS is unique to PAWS,” Labriola says. “They’re as overrun as everyone else, but we keep having to say no because we don’t have the room to place those animals. PAWS Atlanta is now having to decline kill shelters’ requests to take animals, as it’s done regularly in the past. Animal welfare is already one of the top occupations for burnout and compassion fatigue, she says. “If I’m a shelter that previously sent a hundred dogs to a receiving shelter every week, but now I can’t, and I can’t get a veterinarian, and I don’t have enough staff, I’m going to be greatly overwhelmed,” Hamrick says. But what seems to be happening, Zeidman says, is that the movement of animals between facilities has “dropped off significantly.” “The movement of animals from high-intake to high-adoption communities is critical to keep the national numbers high for adoption and low for euthanasia,” says Steve Zeidman, senior vice president at PetHealth Inc, a company that tracks shelter intake data nationwide. Meanwhile, it’s common for specialized rescue groups for specific dog breeds, such as pit bulls or huskies, or species (rabbit rescues, for instance) to take in animals from county or city shelters where they may otherwise be euthanized and place them in foster homes. Larger, under-resourced rural shelters with low adoption rates, for example, rely on sending animals to better-off shelters in areas where adoption rates are high. The animal sheltering community typically relies on a network to thrive. Slowed adoptions, longer stays, and staffing shortages have consequences. Right: Shelter staff member Chloe Arrington holds Ladonna, while technician Kebreaunna Benn cleans the cage of Sierra Leon, a two-year-old male who was just adopted. “He’s such a loving little animal that didn’t deserve this." “I cry thinking about if we didn’t get him out,” she says. Porter herself took in Baloo (she calls him a sweet-natured “couch bunny”), who now spends his days lounging in her living room. On July 13, Porter’s organization arranged for Baloo, Elliott, and three other rabbits to be taken to Ontario, where she’d found them foster homes. “I start early in the morning, and at midnight I’m still going.
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“It’s horrible, and it’s nonstop,” she says. She gets calls all day from people finding rabbits abandoned outside. In southern Ontario, by Porter’s count this week, 40 shelters have so many domestic rabbits that they won’t accept any more. And, crucially, the pandemic has broken key links in the transport chain that takes animals from the streets to their new homes. Many shelters helping dogs, cats, rabbits, and other pets in need have been hurt by staffing shortages-resulting in reduced operations, fewer animal intakes, and fewer major adoption events, says Holly Sizemore, chief mission officer at Best Friends Animal Society, which advocates for shelter animals. The number of pets in need of rescuing today hasn’t quite returned to pre-pandemic levels, but COVID-19-related complications have created a domino effect. in 2020 were lower than in 2019-the result of shelters taking in fewer animals-and there’s no indication that returning pandemic pets is “any sort of trend,” says Lindsay Hamrick, director of shelter outreach and engagement at the Humane Society of the United States. It’s been claimed in numerous reports that last year, during the early months of the pandemic, shelters saw record adoptions and that people who now are returning to the office and taking long-awaited vacations are surrendering their pandemic pets.īut on a large scale, neither claim holds up: Overall, adoptions in the U.S.