In 2020, animal shelters emptied as people rushed out to adopt pandemic pets. However, that situation has changed for the worst.
Now, many shelters are filled to the brim.
鈥淲e鈥檝e seen this disturbing pendulum shift of adoptions going down 鈥� relinquishments going up, and shelter populations really surging to unmanageable levels,鈥� said Dr. Julie Levy, a professor of shelter medicine at the University of Florida.
Researchers at the University of Florida, including Dr. Levy, have identified one of the reasons why: There鈥檚 been limited access to spay and neuter surgeries.
They鈥檇 been hearing complaints throughout the pandemic, she said. Some were from owners over increased wait times for the procedures. Others had more serious concerns.
鈥淪helters were not able to get the animals that they were adopting out spayed and neutered in a timely manner. Programs that focused on trapping and sterilizing free-roaming community cats were not having access. And we were starting to go through multiple kitten seasons without adequate access to surgery,鈥� she said.
That prompted Dr. Levy and her colleagues to look at where and how many of these procedures were done. Their results were in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science.
The researchers examined data from 212 clinics nationwide (which all used the same cloud-based computing software), which together spayed or neutered more than a million animals in 2019.
But that number dropped about 10% over the last two years, which translates to 190,818 fewer surgeries performed.
Applied nationally, that suggests millions of cats and dogs went without.
鈥淣ot only did (clinics) miss nearly three million surgeries over the past two years, but they also aren鈥檛 even doing as well as they did three years ago,鈥� said Levy.
Shutdowns obviously affected these numbers, but there have been veterinarian and technician shortages, too. Levy said that is an industry-wide problem.
While the researchers found that every region had about the same rate of declining spay/neuter procedures, it affected the South and Southwest the most. Levy said that's because that region tends to perform the surgeries on more animals overall.
Anecdotally, she's heard that more people experiencing housing troubles have been surrendering their pets, too, but it鈥檚 hard to say how much any single factor is filling shelters.
Levy implores animal lovers to offer up help at shelters and adopt or foster wherever they can.
She hopes more communities also turn their focus to keeping pets with families and offering support, so dogs, cats and other critters don鈥檛 end up caged or euthanized.
The study鈥檚 lead author, Dr. Simone Guerios, noted in a that increased spay and neuter access over the last 50 years 鈥渋s the single most important driver of reduced pet overpopulation and euthanasia in animal shelters.鈥�
鈥淭he rise in subsidized spay-neuter access helped drive the euthanasia of shelter pets in the United States from an estimated 13.5 million in 1973 to 1.5 million in 2019,鈥� she stated.
But now, for the first time in decades, Levy said we鈥檙e seeing that trend reverse.
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