Animal rescue workers in the United States are talking about how hard it is for them to take care of all the new animals. Shelters are full of animals, and the people who work there are afraid of what this means for the animals’ health and long lives.
Sierra and Michael work at the Mendocino Coast Humane Society in California. They have talked about what it’s like to work at an animal rescue during this very troubled time. As an example, they talked about how many animals have been put into shelters and how many animals have died on the streets.
As a result of animal abuse, they said they had to take in almost 700 animals last year. A lot of people in the area are also being told by animal control to leave any animals they find where they were found because there aren’t enough homes to take them in.
It’s hard for these places to keep up, according to experts, because people don’t realize how bad the situation is. In the United States, nearly 700,000 cats were put to sleep in shelters last year.
The problems start when you think about the choices animal shelters have to make. Kill shelters have to take in more animals and then decide which animal to euthanize to make room. No-kill shelters, on the other hand, have to turn animals away if they are full.
A lot of this was blamed on the “pandemic puppy,” which was a trend during the pandemic where people got pets but then gave them back to shelters or put them up for adoption when the world resumed normalcy. This might explain why the number of animals in shelters has gone down in recent years and then back up again now.
Experts say that shelter workers can’t do it for the money because the average yearly salary of a shelter worker is less than $30,000, and shelter workers say that they are on the front lines of helping people.
