Pet surrenders during the pandemic

[Catherine]

The Palm Springs Animal Shelter has noticed a trend in animal surrenders lately. Pandemic pets, those adopted during the pandemic, are doing fine. The people who adopted them are able to care for them. The pets being surrendered now are older pets that were adopted years ago. They tend to be larger dogs that the people can no longer afford to feed because of financial hardship. Sometimes the people have lost their housing and are moving in with family and just can't take the dog with them. As this crisis drags on people are more and more facing hardship. They don't want to give up their pets, but they can't look after them any more.

https://www.desertsun.com/story/life/pet...540459002/

The shelter is doing what it can to help people as are many other shelters. There are pet food banks and vet clinics that are helping.
Sadly as this drags on there will be more surrenders. Sometimes  people have to make hard choices because of difficult circumstances. I am glad they are bringing their dogs to the shelters rather than abandoning them.  Perhaps some of the people still wanting pets can take one of the older dogs.

I wish they could arrange to foster the dogs until things improve. I am sure an old dog would love to go home to his family even if the foster family has been very good to him. This is a hard time for us all, but it must be very hard for a dog who doesn't understand why his people have given him to strangers.