In a tragic but predictable trend, as the pandemic begins to wind down and many people go back to work in person, we are seeing a huge wave of pets surrendered to shelters.
When government mandated lockdowns began in the U.S. in March of 2020, many people were able to work from home who normally can't. It seemed like a great opportunity to adopt a new furry companion. At the time, people were warned not to adopt if they knew they couldn't keep their new family member when the pandemic ended. Apparently they didn't listen.
Sign the petition to encourage local governments to allocate emergency funding to local shelters to help care for the influx of pets in their care!
So many animals thought they'd found their forever homes this year. They were even more delighted to learn that their humans would be home with them most, if not all, of the time! The amount of animals that were adopted or fostered during the COVID-19 pandemic was one of very few silver linings of a devastating time, with shelters and foster agencies routinely running out of pets who were available for adoption. Yet that didn't last long.
Now that case rates are going down, thanks to vaccinations in much of the U.S., people are being called back in to work in person, and as a result, a huge number of new pet-parents are just abandoning their pets. There are reports out of several cities that all the local rescues are totally full and cannot accept any more animals. One person who found a stray and tried to ask a nearby organization to care for it received the advice that her two options were to either adopt the stray or leave it to fend for itself -- risking getting hit by a car or starving to death.
We live symbiotically with domesticated animals and it's on us to humanely manage situations such as this. We owe it to these poor animals to collectively care for them until they can find new homes or foster situations. Please sign the petition and call on local governments to give emergency funding to shelters.
And of course, if you are capable of fostering or adopting a companion animal and live in the U.S., please contact your local shelter and find out how you can help them in this time of need.
