Shelter in place
Pandemic forces more reliance on fosters, reductions in animal intakes
The COVID-19 pandemic has strained Houston-area animal shelters, limiting operations during the busiest time of the year and requiring a massive increase in fosters and adoptions to meet demand.
City and county officials say they have been able to withstand the corona virus imposed challenges thanks to a near-herculean response from residents and rescue groups around the Houston area, with the key being a sharp uptick in fosters.
Sustained success, however, rests on a number of uncertainties. As the city’s Bureau of Animal Regulation and Control, or BARC, and the county shelter, Harris County Pets, continue to operate under a diminished capacity, Houstonians will have to continue fostering and adopting at higher-than-usual rates, shelter officials say. And if people rush to return foster animals to shelters when they return to work, or if they get evicted when rent protections expire, the surge could overwhelm capacity, officials said.
“Most of the rescue groups here are as sustainable as the community is willing to support,” said Kerry McKeel, se-
nior Houston program manager for Best Friends Animal Society, an animal welfare organization. “We’re constantly looking for fosters to support our programs so we’re able to pull more animals from Harris County, BARC and the other municipal shelters in the area. As long as we have more fosters that are coming into our programs, then I think it will be sustainable.”
At the beginning of the pandemic back in March, Houston animal shelter officials confronted serious doubts about their ability to meet demand.
Among the challenges: To meet social distancing recommendations, BARC and Harris County Pets divided their staffs into alternating shifts. That limited contact between employees, but also diminished their capacity to take in and house animals.
Many local private and public shelters also restricted in-person visits or scrapped them altogether, creating uncertainty about whether they could get cats and dogs in and out the door fast enough.
On top of that, breeding season for cats and dogs had begun, a period that strained shelters even before coronavirus.
“When the pandemic first started, we were quite worried,” said Michael White, Harris County’s director of veterinary public health. “We thought we were going to get inundated with animals, and we had some issues with trying to keep staff socially distanced, so we had to split our staff into two teams so that we didn’t have everybody here at the same time.”
It has not been an entirely smooth ride since, but officials said they have yet to experience a rush of foster returns and, for now, have continued to accept new animals at their facilities while staying within their reduced capacities. The boost in fosters and adoptions has aided BARC and Harris County Pets, the two largest local public shelters, along with private facilities such as the Houston SPCA, many of which also have reduced day-to-day staffing and operations.
“We had hundreds and hundreds of applications come in to foster animals, as well as rescue groups stepping up,” said Adriane Fadely, the division manager of marketing and community outreach for BARC. “It was pretty impactful the way people really stepped up to help. I don’t know if they realized they were going to be at home for a little bit and had that opportunity, but we saw a really positive outcome.”
Foster campaign
In mid-March, on the same day County Judge Lina Hidalgo and Mayor Sylvester Turner announced restrictions on Houston and Harris County bars and restaurants, Best Friends Animal Society launched a campaign seeking support for the foster and adoption programs at local public shelters.
The campaign ran across social media and for nearly a month on KPRC -TV, during which 1,458 Houstonarea animals were adopted or placed in foster homes and participating shelters reduced their animal populations by an average of 90 percent, according to McKeel.
“I think a lot of people ended up just wanting to have a quarantine companion,” McKeel said. “And then what ended up happening is that a lot of people ended up getting bonded to the animal and ended up adopting.”
Under normal conditions, BARC can hold up to about 550 animals, while the county shelter typically holds 250 to 300, White said. Both shelters are required by law to accept every animal that comes through their doors, though with employees working on rotations, the county cut its capacity roughly in half.
BARC also has reduced its intake of cats and dogs, Fadely said, though the total has fluctuated wildly during the pandemic. The shelter also has made a plea to the public to avoid picking up stray animals “unless citizens are prepared to care for them at home,” an effort to reduce their intake of strays.
“It’s like a game of chess, really,” she said. “We’ve found that every day here is different. We know that, and we have to be very quick on our feet here, whether it be a hurricane or a pandemic. We have to come together and really work through exactly how we want to make everything work. So, it can get kind of chaotic, but we really thrive in that.”
White said the county shelter experienced a spike in animal dropoffs near the beginning of the pandemic, which he said may have stemmed partly from people being exposed to a high number of strays as they spent more time outside than usual.
Post-COVID takeaways
To limit traffic inside the facility, BARC is almost exclusively doing curbside foster and adoption pickups — while allowing people to virtually meet prospective pets through Zoom calls — and restricting animal drop-offs to appointments only. Private facilities, such as the Houston SPCA, have pivoted to similar systems.
Harris County is requiring all visits — fosters, adoptions and drop-offs — to be scheduled by appointment, which White says has limited their intake but also allowed for a more organized system than usual.
“I have to admit, I like the appointment system. It makes things much more manageable,” he said. “I do foresee, when all this stuff is over and it’s not necessary to do all this, we’re going to go back more toward our normal operation. We may still keep appointments, but there would be an increased number of appointments that we could do per day.”
Another COVID adaptation that may stick, McKeel said, is the shelters’ increased reliance on foster homes, as animal welfare advocates push for brickand-mortar facilities to devote more resources to fosters and transporting animals to other states where there is higher demand for adoptions.
“I think eventually, the shelter of the future will be sustained with community support and fosters,” she said. “Because we can build bigger shelters, but we’re just going to fill them up.”