Shelters struggle as pets adopted in pandemic come back
Many of the companion animals that quarantined Houstonians adopted last summer are being returned as families go back to school, work and travel, overwhelming already crowded shelters that are also struggling with higher rates of disease among animals.
The increase in surrenders has put the Houston Humane Society at near-critical capacity, coming also as adoption rates have declined during a typically busy summer mating season, said Angelina Saucedo, marketing director. Other facilities say they’ve been strained by COVID-19-related abandonments and evictions.
Take Molly, a 3-year-old tabby who was at the shelter for nearly a year before finally being adopted in July 2020. It seemed to be a perfect match — a loving family with kids who wanted a lowmaintenance animal. She was returned in March when the adopters took a road trip to visit family out of state.
“That was just devastating,” Saucedo said. “Now she is back where she started and she is a harder-to-adopt animal.”
The process of surrendering adopted pets not only takes a toll on the shelter and its staff but also the animals.
“It affects them. They go to a home, they become comfortable with a family and have companionship, and then she comes back and she’s a little more timid now, a little more scared,” Saucedo said.
Molly is not alone. Many of the pandemic puppies adopted last summer are being returned as full-grown dogs, which are much harder for the shelter to adopt out. The shelter had 106 adopted animals returned last summer; that number has jumped to 163 this summer.
Some shelters, including the Humane Society, have strict vetting processes for adopting animals that sometimes delay getting them into homes. The Humane Society, for example, requires vet records of every pet in the applicant’s home, a meeting between the pet and every family member in the home and a detailed inquiry into the applicant’s living arrangement.
Montgomery County Animal Shelter director Aaron Johnson said many inundated shelters are aiming to make the adoption process as easy as possible so that they can get more animals into homes.
Saucedo and others are worried about the effect of the return to school, a time that often leads to more intakes as families become too busy to care for their pets. Hurricane season and storms can lead to large influxes.
“Anytime we have flooding issues or storms, we are still going to see a lot of intakes,” said Eddie Miranda, senior public information officer for Harris County Public Health, which oversees the Harris County Pets shelter.
Harris County Pets most recently reached critical capacity in the days after the July Fourth weekend, when it had 741 animals; it can comfortably care for 525. It was sitting at 430 as of Monday.
‘The worst it’s been’
The Montgomery County Animal Shelter is operating at critical capacity, with staff having to triple and quadruple the number of animals per kennel. The shelter can comfortably care for around 490 animals. As of early August, it had more than 650 in its care.
On a sweltering July weekend, officials with the Pasadena Animal Shelter found a German shepherd mother tied to a tree, her puppies left free to roam next to a busy road in an area where coyote sightings are common. She was one of 14 animals abandoned outside the shelter on that weekend alone. Other shelters reported more abandoned animals as well.
“We cannot keep up with the flood of animals coming through our doors,” Marketing Communications Manager Carey O’Connor wrote in an email.
She added that the cruelty cases the shelter has seen have also contributed.
“In this area of the country, animals are neglected, abandoned and abused in record numbers, and this year is the worst it’s been,” O’Connor said. “In social media forums for shelter professionals, the stress is palpable.”
Similar to many Houston-area shelters and rescues, the Pasadena shelter heavily relies on transports to send animals across the country, especially to the Northwest, where adopters are on wait lists. It also is working on creative adoption campaigns to get more animals into homes, such as its new “Doggie Date program.”
The pandemic’s financial toll has played a critical role in the increase of intakes, mostly because of evictions. HHS and MCAS have seen a rise in people unable to care for their pets because of losing their homes or other financial struggles.
‘Playing with their pet’s life’
Johnson, of the Montgomery County shelter, said another common explanation for owner surrenders these days is that residents say they aren’t home enough. He argues that especially during the summer months, those pets would most likely be better off in a home where the owners are not there often than in an overcrowded shelter, grouped with multiple animals to a kennel, where the threat of disease is present.
“Whether if it’s a shelter that has to euthanize for space, or a shelter encountering disease problems and the animal is not vaccinated and gets sick and ends up getting euthanized or something like that, they are essentially playing with their pet’s life.”
Johnson said shelters are seeing more disease, particularly distemper. It has been especially present since Hurricane Harvey, but “this year it’s just been hitting everybody kind of hard.”
The issue is certainly present in Houston: The city’s municipal shelter, BARC, had to close its doors in June and July because of a distemper outbreak.
Johnson added that parvo has also been seen more commonly in shelters. He is pushing for a new facility that is critically needed to keep up with the county’s growth.
“We are growing so much up here that we really aren’t able to keep up,” Johnson said. “And this shelter, it’s not big enough, it’s old, it’s just falling apart.”
Johnson said he is hopeful community members become more mindful of the effect their actions can have.
“It’s like getting a child. You don’t end up giving your child up because you’re moving or something like that,” Johnson said. “If they would just try, try to find a rescue or try to rehome the pet. … (Now) is probably the worst time of year to do it (surrender an animal).”