Sage is an almost 3-year-old shepherd mix who loves to play ball and has a habit of carting around two of her favorite things: plush toys and dog bowls.
She was also one of dozens of dogs waiting to be adopted from Joint Animal Services, Thurston County's foremost regional animal shelter and control agency. Sage was adopted last October, but her owners decided she was not a good fit for them and sent her back in May.
In total, Sage was at the shelter for over 100 days.
"The shelter is a great substitute for a short term, but we can't house dogs indefinitely," Bekka Kraai, Animal Services' positive outcomes coordinator, told The Olympian. "Especially since we don't have the capacity to house that many dogs."
A smaller no-kill shelter servicing all 300,000 residents of Thurston County, Animal Services has been at capacity with large and medium-sized dogs like Sage since March.
Animal Services is not the only shelter facing this crisis. Since the pandemic, shelters across the country have been taking in more dogs than they can move out, most of them larger dogs. At many shelters, dog intakes and lengths of stay are rising, but dog adoptions and transfers to other shelters are not.
"Everybody's struggling this year because there's just not enough shelters or space to get some of these animals out," Animal Services director Sarah Hock told The Olympian. "And the most popular dogs that people want to adopt are puppies and small dogs."
The capacity crisis
Animal Services can only house about 35 dogs. But the shelter has had to house about 40 on-and-off since March.
Animal Services, unlike other shelters, is taking in fewer dogs than before the pandemic. Hock attributes the decrease to the success of programs that keep dogs from entering shelter care in the first place.
Animal Services took in 1,595 dogs in 2019. And although the shelter has been seeing an annual rise in dog intake since 2020, it only took in 1,069 dogs in 2023.
Hock said the dogs Animal Services does take in need shelter care the most. They are not only larger, but have extended hold periods or medical or behavioral issues. So, they stay at the shelter longer.
"We have fewer animals coming into the shelter, but at the same time, we have fewer animals leaving," Hock said. "And that's really what's causing this capacity issue."
In 2023, only 786 dogs left the shelter through adoption, reclamation or transfer to another shelter. In comparison, 1,164 dogs left the shelter in 2019.
The longer a dog is in a shelter, the longer it takes up kennel space that could be used by other dogs in need. And Animal Services only has the staff and volunteers to maintain about 30 kennels.
"If we don't have the kennel available, we don't have the option to deny someone at the door like a rescue does. So we have to take in most everything that comes to us," Kraai said.
But adoptions and transfers, two ways Animal Services moves dogs out of its kennels, have decreased.
In 2019, the shelter adopted out 338 dogs. That dropped to 227 in 2020 and took until 2023, when the shelter adopted out 393 dogs, to rise again.
While dog adoptions at the shelter have recovered since the pandemic, dog transfers to other shelters have not. The shelter transferred 202 dogs in 2019, and transfers have been less than half that in the years since. Only 62 dogs were transferred in 2023.
"There's no one to transfer animals to anymore," Hock said. "Because they don't have space either."
How the crisis affects dogs
Shelters are stressful.
Dogs in Animal Services spend 23 hours a day in kennels hearing other dogs barking, smelling other animals and getting stressed. Hock said that stress starts from the first day a dog enters shelter care.
"When you start operating at or over your capacity, that's when you see animals really stressing out," Hock said.
When dogs get stressed, they get sick.
In a shelter, dogs can develop kennel cough and other illnesses, some highly contagious. Even a minor medical issue like kennel cough can become major if the shelter cannot treat it for months. And stressed dogs take longer to recover from those issues.
Shelters also can change dogs' behaviors, with some developing bad manners or other behavior issues.
"This isn't just our shelter, because it's old. It's every shelter," Hock said. "When you have this many animals at any given time, there's always an increased likelihood for those health issues to arise, for behavior issues to arise."
Both medical and behavioral issues keep dogs from being adopted. Dogs with these issues may need treatment, recovery or evaluation before Animal Services can put them up for adoption.
To help, the shelter sends them to one of about 50 active foster homes for dogs.
"[Fostering] allows us to care for more animals outside of the shelter. And that is better for the animals, both medically and behaviorally, if that is the case," Hock said. "It keeps them healthy, safe and stress-free."
Dogs in foster care may not have an issue at all; they may just be too young, too stressed out or in need of a foster to advocate for their adoption.
Sage was too stressed out. She calmed down by staying in a foster home for the last few weeks of July.
"That was her first time we were able to get her into foster," Hock said. "And she really enjoyed it. And (her fosters) really liked having her."
But not all of those 50 foster homes foster larger dogs like Sage. As with dog adopters, Animal Services does not have enough dog fosters, either.
What is causing the crisis
Michelle Dosson is the Pacific regional director of Best Friends Animal Society, a national animal welfare organization partnered with thousands of shelters, rescues and support organizations including Animal Services. Best Friends collects and analyzes data on animal welfare from over 7,900 shelters and rescues across the country.
Dosson told The Olympian she sees three causes of the crisis: competition with breeders and pet stores, limited veterinary care and limited dog-friendly housing.
"We feel the pressure of all of the same things that our community members are facing, which is, again, the cost of veterinary care, the cost of housing and the restrictions on housing," Kraai said. "And what that means for our pets."
More people have been acquiring pets since the pandemic. But they are not adopting them from shelters or rescues. Rather, they are buying them from breeders and pet stores.
Breeders and pet stores, excluding ones like PetSmart that partner with rescues, offer what many shelters do not: availability and accessibility. Hock said people can buy any dog they want anytime without going through a days-long adoption process that may not guarantee them a dog. And many do, regardless of whether those dogs are responsibly bred.
"My competitor is not necessarily other shelters and rescues. If you're not adopting from me, adopt from somebody," Hock said. "But my biggest competitor is those online services and pet stores."
The veterinary shortage also has "crept up" on shelters for the last decade, Dosson said.
Fewer veterinarians mean limited veterinary care. That affects the cost and accessibility of not just vaccines and other treatments, but also preventative care like spaying and neutering. Without it, dog populations continue to increase.
If owners cannot afford or access veterinary care, they cannot get their dogs treated when they get sick. Instead, they relinquish their dogs to shelters.
"Even our middle-class citizens, now, veterinary care is out of reach," Hock said. "Even when you can get in, which might be two to three months from now, for an issue, the costs have gone up exponentially."
Then, there are the limitations on pet-friendly housing.
During the pandemic, shelters saw an increase in adoptions. Not knowing whether they would close, shelters moved as many animals as possible into homes. Meanwhile, evictions from homes across the country were put on hold.
But most of those eviction holds have expired. Pet owners facing eviction must either find alternative, pet-friendly housing or relinquish their pets to shelters.
"People will say, 'Oh, people rushed into adopting.' I don't think that it's the same set of animals that were adopted during COVID. I think that it's pets in general," Dosson said. "And housing insecure people who are being forced into relinquishing their pets because they themselves have nowhere to go."
With their size, cost and perceived high level of maintenance, larger dogs have even fewer options for veterinary care and housing than other pets such as smaller dogs or cats.
So, larger dogs are harder to find adopters and fosters for.
"All of these things create that cascading effect that causes us to consistently have these capacity issues," Hock said. "So it's not just one thing. But all of these things start to build and makes it a bigger thing."
What Animal Services is doing about the crisis
The easiest solution for Animal Services: keep dogs from coming into the shelter in the first place.
Dogs are usually found within a mile of where their owners lose them, Hock said. By taking dogs out of their neighborhoods and to a shelter, would-be Samaritans drop the likelihood of their owners finding them again by half.
To avoid that, Animal Services advises residents who come upon a lost dog to search for the owner by walking the dog, checking lost and founds online, and even holding it for the shelter in their homes.
Meanwhile, owners are advised to microchip and give their dogs visible identification tags, which make them more likely to be returned home within 24 hours.
"I'm not saying don't bring us anything — that's why we're here," Hock said. "But if you're really wanting to get this animal home, those are the steps."
Animal Services also is working on another solution: moving dogs that do come in as quickly through the shelter's system as possible.
"From stray or owner surrender through their medical health checks, their spay-neuter, and get placed up for adoption ASAP," Hock said. "Because studies have shown that the longer they're here, the more likely it increases that length of stay."
The shelter boasts some of the lowest adoption fees in Western Washington. No matter the age, breed or gender, dogs cost $90 to adopt and come spayed, neutered, vaccinated, microchipped, licensed and with post-adoption support.
Adoption fees are discounted or waived at the shelter's adoption specials, which it hosts periodically when its kennels are at their fullest.
"We want to be accessible to the public," Hock said. "You don't have to be rich to adopt from us. Because everybody deserves the chance to have a pet and to be shown unconditional love."
However, some people do face barriers during the adoption process.
Barriers to adoption vary between shelters. Some shelters require home visits, veterinary references, landlord checks, wait periods or even experience with certain breeds to adopt a pet. Inaccessibility due to the shelter's location or operating hours also can be a barrier.
Animal Services' only requirement for adopting a dog is a landlord check. And Hock said the shelter is moving away from that, too.
"We do try to reduce as many barriers as possible so that people can adopt, so that people can foster, so that people can volunteer and help us," Hock said. "We are consistently looking at our practices on what barriers are in place that are inhibiting people from coming to us."
Animal Services has other programs in place to help owners care for their pets.
These include the shelter's public pet pantry, which restocks daily with food and pet supplies, and surrenders by appointment, during which the shelter provides resources for grants, behavioral recommendations and more before owners relinquish their pets.
"We want to do everything we possibly can to keep animals from coming in. We want to be the last resort, we want to be the place where they have to come because they're injured, they're abandoned," Hock said. "The ones that need our help the most are the ones that should be here. And everybody else, that's our easy rehome and easy get home."
How to help
To combat the crisis, Dosson suggests shelters engage with their communities, earn the support of elected officials and network with other shelters and rescues.
Despite an outdated 1990s shelter design and limitations in staff, volunteers and other resources, Animal Services has managed to do all three.
"It's not ideal," Dosson said of the shelter, which she visited in April. "They're still hustling. And I can just imagine what they could do if they had the resources to be able to do it easier and more accessibly."
Thurston County residents can provide some of the resources.
Hock said they can volunteer, foster, adopt or donate monetarily or in kind with food and pet supplies. Animal Services is most in need of larger dog adopters and fosters. Interested residents should visit Animal Services' Get Involved webpage, and view pets up for adoption on its Adopt a Pet webpage.
Though larger dogs may be bigger and more costly, they may not be as high maintenance as perceived, Kraai said. Some larger dogs may even be lower maintenance than their smaller animal counterparts. It depends on a dog's disposition.
"Every dog is an individual. And so I think every dog as an individual has different needs," Kraai said. "And so I don't think that large dogs need to be intimidating to foster homes or to adopters."
The shelter is hosting an adoption special. Sponsored by a Best Friends grant, all animals will be free to adopt with a limit of one free dog and two free cats per household.
One household went to the shelter's adoption special on Aug. 2 and left adopting Sage, ending the months-long search for her forever home.
"We get really excited, especially some of our long-timers that we worry about. It always makes us feel so good when they finally get adopted and find a home," Hock said.
Animal Services is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 3120 Martin Way E, Olympia.
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