In April 2020, news outlets were reporting that the demand for pet adoptions was so high, some shelters were completely empty.
The country had just shut down due to the pandemic, and many Americans were holed up inside their homes for an unforeseen amount of time, grappling with loneliness, boredom and feelings of helplessness. The companionship of a furry friend seemed an easy fix – instant gratification that held promise, purpose and distraction during an unprecedented time.
The American Pet Products Association, according to a survey, revealed in 2020 that pet ownership in the U.S. rose from 67 percent of households to an all-time high of 70 percent. In another 2020 survey, Honest Paws found that Californians adopted more pets than the residents of any other U.S. state, with a total of 256,739 pets adopted from shelters that year.
But now that it’s 2022, Americans are returning to on-site work, some lost their homes and had to relocate, some had babies – and shelters are filling up again.
As a result of this post-pandemic conundrum, Liz Meneses started her own rogue cat-saving operation. Her La Verne apartment complex was swarming with stray cat colonies, and she couldn’t stand by any longer. She paid out of pocket, trapping the feral and displaced cats, often mothers with litters of up to five kittens, fed them, cared for them, had the mothers neutered and then worked to safely shelter them.
When her boyfriend’s mother said a coworker was threatening to dump her two pet cats after moving in with her grandchildren, Meneses didn’t hesitate. She took in the cats so they could be safely rehomed.
“This is a story that I am constantly hearing and constantly reading about,” Meneses explained over the phone. “It’s really heartbreaking because people, I mean, they’re surrendering a pet. They say they’ve got so much going on in their lives now. It’s really sad, because it’s just not fair to these animals.”
Meneses also recently found a pit bull roaming her apartment complex. “I ended up taking the pit bull to the vet. I got it scanned for a microchip and it turned out the pit bull had been adopted from the Orange County Animal Care Shelter. So, they managed to contact the owners and the owners got in touch with me,” she says. “The owners came to pick up this dog with their newborn baby and basically asked me how he was, and I said he was really good. And they’re like, well, do you want him?”
That’s when she started to suspect the owners had let him loose purposely. Because Meneses didn’t want the dog to end up on the streets again, she agreed to find him a new home. The owners handed over the collar and adoption papers, which they’d brought with them, and Meneses did the legwork to place him with a pit bull rescue.
Reaching out for help
Meneses eventually realized she couldn’t carry the burden of her rogue pet-saving operation alone. She made fundraiser flyers and posted them around her complex, and ultimately connected with a local rescue organization, Priceless Pets in Claremont.
“When the pandemic first hit, people were at home, they had the time. I think a lot of people were lonely, and were looking for that companionship. So they immediately went to rescuing animals,” says Brooke Heimbach, the manager at Priceless Pets. “Now that everything’s opening up, people are getting busy, they’re going back to their jobs. They just don’t have the time that they thought they did. So their pets are going back into shelters and the shelters are full again.”
Heimbach said Priceless Pets has approximately three walk-ins a week looking to surrender their pets, while their online intake receives up to six emails a day. The Friends of Upland Animal Shelter also said they are receiving daily calls from desperate people who can no longer care for their pets.
Because shelters and rescues often charge a surrender fee of about $100 to $200, more negligent pet owners have simply let their pets loose. Some have tried to claim they were strays when bringing them into shelters.
“We’re very suspicious when people come in and say they found the pet as a stray and little Johnny’s there bawling his eyes out and calling it Tigger,” says Shelley Foglesong, vice president of Friends of Upland Animal Shelter Board. “It happens all the time. They’ll bring their kids. We can usually tell. We’ve even caught people when we scan the pet for a microchip as a stray and the microchip comes up with the person who’s turning it in.”
In a case like this, animal services may be informed, and the owners can be charged with pet abandonment and face a fine.
“When everybody was saying, ‘Oh, I’m home now, I want a pet,’ our answer was, ‘What’s your plan for when you go back to work?’” says Foglesong. “Because you’re not adopting for a short period of time when you adopt a pet. You’re adopting it for the life of the pet. You can’t just adopt for a couple of years until the pandemic ends, and then give it back.”
The uptick in recent pet surrenders has shown that for many people, this wasn’t a consideration.
Heimbach said another troubling annual trend is the relinquishing of rabbits just after Easter. Apparently, bunnies are brought home as a gimmick for the spring holiday and then turned over to shelters once the novelty has worn off. Sure enough, when visiting Rancho Cucamonga Animal Center, Director of Animal Services Veronica Fincher says, “We’ve got a lot of rabbits. It’s a little bit harder for our smaller animals to find new homes.”
This unsentimental approach to the adopting and surrendering of pets begs the bigger question: What do we owe the animals we bring home?
Beware of social media remedies
Many people use social media in an effort to rehome their pets, and while this can be an effective way to find someone you know who’s able to take on the responsibility, it can be dangerous as well.
Rescuers advise against listing pets on Craigslist, or rehoming them with strangers because, unfortunately, smaller pets especially may be used for bait in dog fighting circles or for other nefarious purposes. The pets’ ultimate safety and well-being should be a main priority when searching for a new home.
“I do fundraising and networking through social media,” says Meneses, who agrees social media should only be used to rehome pets with people who have been properly vetted or can be vouched for by a trusted source. “Basically, that’s how so many independent rescues have started. And when I say independent rescues, I mean people who have a house or an extra spare room, and they’ve just loaded it up with crates, so that they can take any animal that they find until they find placement with a rescue, or a home with someone who’s interested in adopting them.”
Experts say that rehoming your pet by surrendering them to a shelter should be a last resort. “First, try family and friends . . . coworkers,” Foglesong says. The key is rehoming your pet with a responsible and trustworthy family.
“Before considering surrendering, I think more people should take the time, put the work in if the animal needs training, instead of just surrendering them,” Heimbach says.
Having a pet trained professionally can be pricey, and while some are able to invest the money, others may only need to invest some time. There are online resources for pet training just a Google search away. YouTube has endless how-to videos that provide pet training instruction, and the comment sections of many of these videos are filled with testimonials from thankful pet owners who put in the work.
Giving up your pet should be the last option.
If you’ve arrived at that last stop – and you’ve exhausted all hope that a friend, family member or coworker might be able to give your pet a safe home – try using reputable online sources to find a new home for your pet. Rehome by Adopt-a-Pet lets users create a profile, vet applicants, safely meet with your pet’s potential new families, and finalize adoptions. This provides a safer alternative than online classifieds, and keeps pets from idling in the despair and discomfort of a shelter cage.
To help displaced pets find new homes with families able to care for them long-term, donate to your local animal shelters and rescues. Pet food, supplies and financial donations can make a difference in creating a better outcome for California’s furry friends.
