By: Zoha Jan
The Southern California Shelters are facing capacity issues after COVID-19 due to people adopting more pets than before.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass released the first budget proposal of her administration on April 18, where she highlighted the city’s struggling animal shelters and the needed help.
According to the budget, an additional $4.8 million for the city’s troubled animal services department.
Tom Kiseche volunteered for a few different organizations in Southern California, mainly dealing with dogs and has seen issues in the shelters due to fewer volunteers to help more dogs.
“When COVID-19 happened, the shelters got very emptied because a lot of animals were going out because everybody was bored at home and they figured they would take an animal,” Kiseche said.
Municipal shelters do not have a choice in which animals they can take; they take every animal that comes to the shelter.
“Municipal shelters have to take in animals that have gotten into scuffles with other animals or have bitten somebody and that animal control brings in,” Kiseche said.
There are 5 animal shelters under the LA Animal services.
Kiseche thinks that the shelters are back and under stress, but there should be a routine for the dogs to feel happy staying at the shelter. Due to a lack of resources, the animals at the shelter lack enrichment.
“As a volunteer, the zoo was amazing about animal enrichment; every animal got enrichment all the time, and they came up with enrichment ideas,” Tom said. “There was an enrichment team that interacted with them at their exhibits with smells, toys, and all sorts of stuff and there’s no reason that the city shelters can’t do that same thing.”
Other volunteers of the LA animal shelter feel the same way as Kiecshe. Another volunteer shared her views regarding LA County’s animal shelters.
“Extremely overcrowded with most of the kennels doubled up with more than one dog, which makes it very stressful for a lot of the dogs that may not get along with other dogs,” Volunteer said.
Volunteers cannot take the dogs for walks daily due to having more dogs and fewer volunteers.
“We only have approximately 7 or 8 volunteers that walk the bigger dogs,” Volunteer said. “Right now we have about 145 dogs [one] can tell that a lot of the dogs don’t get out more than maybe twice a month for maybe 20 to 30 minutes,” Volunteer said.
The volunteers are there to try to walk the dogs and interact with the animals to make sure the animals are getting activities. However, currently, the interactions at the shelters are low.
“The only interaction [dogs] have is a staff member putting food in front of it twice a day and hosing down the kennel hopefully twice a day to clean it and that’s the definition of clean just hosing down feces,” Kiseche said.
Animal shelters and non-profit organizations are getting overwhelmed by more animals and less space for animals.
“Starting last year and the last 12-18 months, interest in adoption has dramatically decreased,” Executive Director of Badass Animal Rescue Krista Almqvist said.
During COVID-19, the organization got 70-100 adoption applications compared to 5-10 before the pandemic. However, the dogs that were adopted returned fast after the pandemic.
“Shelters and rescues are experiencing a shortage [of] adopters; the shortage in foster homes, people are economically more crunched right now,” Almqvist said.
Almqvist also thinks that people don’t come to rescues due to having a negative perspective regarding the adoption process.
“Everybody’s welcome to come and adopt a dog with us,” Almqvist said. “There’s been a misconception and it’s been unfortunately put out in trying to make rescues and shelters for the bad guy and I think it’s a justification for people to buy dogs.”
The people adopting are also trying to support shelters, but some people are more likely to buy dogs than adopt.
“I was trying to adopt a dog for a while, but I wasn’t getting a response easily,” Khalid Shouket, an Engineering major at the University of Los Angeles, said.
Shaukat has been trying to adopt a dog for the past 3 months, but first, he was scared to adopt an animal from the shelter, but when he tried to reach out, they responded late.
“The shelters are loud. I have never been to shelters before, but as I was trying to find a dog, I saw how sometimes the shelters feel like a prison,” Shouket said.
As an adopter Shouket did not enjoy the experience of visiting animal shelters, but he is trying to start a page on Instagram to spread awareness regarding the issue.
“Honestly, after seeing the animals, I want people to know that they need homes and shelters aren’t home,” Shouket said. “I am thinking of starting a Tik Tok page to spread awareness, but I am not sure yet,” Shouket said.
