Animal Shelters Overflowing Nationwide
Excerpt from a feature today in the L.A. Times:
An overcrowding crisis has gripped animal shelters across the state and nationwide, exacerbated by a shortage of veterinarians, the high cost of pet care and the overwhelming of rescue organizations, which traditionally take on the overflow from shelters and largely rely on volunteers to foster animals in their homes.
Adoptions aren’t keeping up with the number of dogs coming in, leading to higher euthanasia rates, according to Shelter Animals Count, a nonprofit that tracks shelter statistics nationwide. In California, 9% of dogs at government-run or contracted shelters and rescue organizations were put down from January through October last year, and 13% were put down through October of this year, according to the group’s online database. The figures are similar nationally.
Don’t adopt if you can’t afford it (and given the state of the economy right now, it’s understandable how so many people are struggling), but if possible, even fostering for a few days can take some of the stress off the shelters, as the below ABC report mentions:
