Learn About The Current Shelter Crisis From Shelter Animals Count

Maria chats with Shelter Animals Count (the National Database)'s Executive Director Stephanie Filer about the current crisis facing shelters across the country. Since 2012, they've been collecting and sharing data to help animals and communities. Shelters are still feeling the effects of the pandemic.
Give a listen and learn what YOU can do: Adopt, Foster, Volunteer, Donate.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
It's Maria's MutS and Stuff. Whata great idea on I Art Radio.
Welcome to Maria's MutS and Stuff andwith me today's the executive director, Stephanie
Fyler of Shelter Animals Count, thenational database. So Stephanie, I'm very

(00:21):
intrigued and I can't wait to chatwith you and thank you for making some
time today. Absolutely, we're thrilledto be here. Absolutely. So,
Okay, so let's talk about this. So, Shelter Animals Count. You've
been around for a long time.You're a neutral, independent nonprofit. What
exactly are you? I mean,I know, but let's tell my listeners
what are you? Yeah? Absolutely, So. We were founded in twenty

(00:47):
twelve when all of the national animalwelfare organizations came together and identified the long
need for having animals sheltering data.We were operating a lot on assumptions and
estimates and guesses and anecdotal detail,and knew we needed some more fact based
insights, and so it was reallya collaborative effort where everyone came together to

(01:11):
form this independent, neutral nonprofit organizationsolely focused on collecting animal sheltering statistics to
enchance and increased life saving God it. So now are there I mean,
obviously there's like a big group oflike I saw, like the Humane Society,
the ASPCA, But do are youopen to others like coming aboard or

(01:36):
is it just with these very specificlarge organizations. Yeah, that's a great
question. So these specific large organizationswere who helped find, found and create
and also fund the organization. Butwe actually accept and try to get data
from all fourteen thousand animal shelter andrescue organizations both countries. And then also

(02:01):
we do now in early twenty twentyone, we started collecting services data for
community services. So that also allowshuman service providers who provide things like pet
food and crasis housing, et cetera, to also have the services that they
provide to animals counts for our ownanimals, right right. And then we

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we're currently in all fifty US states, also US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico,
and we are expanding into Canada aswell. Wow, that's incredible.
That is so cool. Yeah,so a lot of growth has happened in
the past few years for sure.Yeah. Yeah, so, and and
I'm sorry that I should know moreabout this, but that's why I'm so

(02:47):
happy to talk to you because youknow, knowledge is power, you know,
and the more we know, themore we can help animals, you
know, in shelters. So theresearch that you do, do you release
information like I know, I becameaware of you when with the latest information

(03:08):
about fewer dog transfers which than before, which we'll get to, but like
how often do you put information outthere? Yeah, so we have we
deliver information in a variety of ways. On our website, we have interactive
dashboards that people anyone from the publiccan go on and short and filter by

(03:30):
species and here and organization types,et cetera. And those are updated monthly,
and then every quarter we release aquarterly report that compares that quarter or
year to date really compared to atleast the past three years. Sometimes we
go back further and those are staticreports based on the data we have at

(03:53):
that snapshot in time. And thenthroughout the year we also released other things
like species diving deeper into species anddiving deeper into organization types and regions and
et cetera. But then we alsostarted doing this year the more surveying of
shelters for things like with checks.So when for example, when we did

(04:18):
one of our actually our Q onereport. We had noticed that the rate
of doggies in Asia had started toincrease, and so we wanted to really
understand why, and so we surveyedour members to give us what was happening
in their individual organizations and try tounderstand if there were any differences between rural

(04:38):
and urban, any differences with differentparts of the country, large for small
organizations, et cetera. And soall of those things we share throughout the
year, which also includes some ofthe data on transfers going down. Wow
wow wow, Okay, wow,that's really I mean, that's that's fascinating
and it's excellent because the bottom lineis we want to get animals adopted.

(05:00):
So it's good that you are alwaysreleasing all of this information. And again,
it just kind of brings home becauseit really gets me so aggravated and
I'm sure you more than me whenpeople say that shelter pets are damaged,
because we know that they're not.You know, they just happened to find
themselves there. So now the latestthing is that fewer dogs are being transferred,

(05:24):
and cat transfers have been pretty similarthan they have been steady like the
past couple of years. Why doyou think it's happening with dogs? Is
it because of the economy, Isit still like the pandemic that's sort of
I guess affecting adoptions, or Imean, is there a reason did you
find? Yeah, that's an interestingthing. I've been an animals sheltering probably

(05:48):
almost two decades now, and inmy entire career it was always cats,
cats, cats. We have toomany cats. Cats are most at risk,
right, and we've really seen thepast few years is that completely flip
flap where cats are actually doing reallywell in shelters when it comes to their

(06:09):
outcomes and the balance with outcomes inand tapes, et cetera. Where dogs
we're seeing a very different experience.And so the transferation was kind of an
interesting one because we really saw intwenty nineteen pre pandemics. We have to
really look now almost five years agoand look at what was happening prior to
the pandemic, And in twenty nineteenwe saw a complete balance of the number

(06:31):
of animals entering shelters, which isin the millions, compared to the number
of animals leaving was almost one forone. It was it was a complete
balance. There was not any animalsleaving or sorry any animals staying behind.
Well, then the pandemic happens intwenty twenty, which we all know,
the communities rallied around their shelters andrescues and started without being the animals,

(06:55):
which is great, but also atthat same time organizations either chose to or
were forced to close their operation orlimit their operation because of mandates. So
what happened was we saw a temporaryspike in adoptions, but then really what

(07:16):
started to become this imbalance of theanimals within our systems. So in twenty
twenty we actually saw a positive trendwhere we had more animals leaving shelters than
were entering. And sometimes it's like, well, how is that possible?
It's because in January one, wedon't start with zero animals. We started
with However, many animals were stillin shelters from the year prior. So

(07:38):
in twenty twenty we saw that twtalshelter population decrease, which was great.
Then in twenty twenty one, ohI should also add in twenty twenty,
what happened when these brick and mortarshelters started to have to close or limit
their operation. Foster based Rescues largelycame in and started to fill some of
that gap, and so the fostersstarted to fill up as the shelters were

(08:01):
starting to empty, and so intwenty twenty one, animals started coming in
more, and we started to feedmore animals entering shelters than we're leaving,
and that's the any outcome. Andthen twenty twenty two we saw the same
thing happened. In twenty twenty three, we saw the same thing happened still.
But really what really caused a lotof this issue with the transfer system

(08:24):
is when rescues came in in twentytwenty and started bringing in a lot of
animals that would traditionally have gone intobrick and mortar shelters. They build up
and because they functioned differently than brickand mortar shelters, they're usually lower volume,
higher touch process, usually longer stay, and sometimes by design, if
they're focusing on kavior medical issues,and they were not able to outcome them

(08:50):
at the rate that we needed forthat transfer system, and so it created
this bottleneck, and that's all thenext started at twenty twenty. We didn't
really feel it until twenty twenty one, and then it has now persisted into
year three following the pandemic, whichis why the system has essentially felt for
dogs right right. And I meanI don't know. I don't know that.
I don't know if there is ananswer, Is there an answer to

(09:13):
why? I mean, because Idon't know. I just remember, like
when the pandemic happened, and itwas a big thing like, oh,
you're going to be home, you'reworking from home, you know, adopt
a pet, adopt, adopt,and I felt like, oh, yay,
you know, and then I startedto hear after that that people were
returning pets and whether it was becausethey couldn't afford it or they lost their

(09:35):
job as a result of the pandemic. I mean, I don't know,
is that part of the reasoning.I mean, I don't even, Like
I said, I don't know ifthere's an answer to it or or why.
But it's just I don't know,is there an answer? Yeah,
So that was one of the interestingthings in twenty twenty one. There was
a headline that really just spread thatpeople were surrendering their pets to shelters and

(09:58):
record number now that people were returningto the new normal, and that fortunately
was not supported by the data.Unfortunately, it's still the narrative we here
three years later, but were whatwe were seeing is that during in twenty
twenty one, in particular in twentytwo for that matter, the number of

(10:20):
pets that were being surrendered actually didnot increase. But what we were seeing
was that the reasons that they weresurrendering them was shifting, and so they
were shifting more towards those economic basedreasons. And you can also see generally
these trends follow what's happening in thecommunities. The shelters are always a magnifying
glass of what's happening to people infamilies and communities. And so where the

(10:45):
areas where there were rent tykes andunaffordable housing, and especially unaffordable pet friendly
housing and especially related to dogs insize and breed, those areas were definitely
impacted the most all during that time. We have to remember the the eviction
moratorium was lifted, right, sopeople found themselves now having to in a

(11:07):
lot of cases have find housing withpets that they were more secure previously.
And then a lot of time,really in the past couple of years,
a lot of landlords have changed housingpolicies to restrict more pet pet families than
they have previously or make it costprohibitive, and so that was happening.
At the same time, our economyis doing what it's been doing the past

(11:30):
couple of years, and it's reallybeen a perfect storm. But I will
say in twenty twenty three, what'sreally interesting is we have well, actually
really over the past three years,we started to see owner surrenders go down
and straight go up. And soit could be that because shelters are so

(11:52):
full and having to change their practiceson policies on admitting new animals. There's
a theory that a lot of thestray increase are really not animals who have
pet or people who are looking forthem. They're really not strays. They're
either being turned in and set thembeing told that they're strays to avoid waiting

(12:15):
lists or other things preventing them fromentering a shelter through a traditional owner surrender
process, or they're truly stories thatare picked up but their owner doesn't intend
to replace them, either because theydon't think they can afford it, or
this is you know, it's justtoo much for what else they have gone
down. There's a whole host ofpossible reasons, but we do know that

(12:39):
true owner surrenders as they are identifiedtoday have been decreasing over the past three
years and they're now at the lowestand they've been, which is since the
pandemic, which is actually encouraging andgreat news. It is you know,
it isn't it is that they're onelens. If we truly do have an
increase of strays right that kind thathelp women, that actually further bottlenecks the

(13:05):
shelter system because now they're having tobe held for a straight hold time sure
where they could be otherism moved throughthe process. So it's complicated and we
haven't yet fully identified the root cause, but it could be a variety of
these things. But in general,the fact that people are continuing and really
always have in recent years that we'vebeen following this, continuing to be dedicated

(13:28):
to keeping their pets as part oftheir family and seeking out resources to be
able to keep them in the homesis all very great, true, true
and true. And I think youknow, there are so many different I
mean, I just know many timesthat there's a you know, a pantry
food drive. It's also for petfood. It's not just for people or
you know, and I think alot of communities do have the resources to

(13:52):
help people, so they can youknow, you can hold on to your
apartment, and you can hold onto your pet as well, because pets
are family as we know. Sowhat can people do? I mean,
I know they can definitely because yourresearch is I mean, it's goal.
It's golden because you're right, Imean the fact, like that whole narrative
that I just I had said toyou about animals being surrendered after the pandemic

(14:16):
even though it never really ended ended, You're right, It just I don't
know where that came from, butit it was almost like, oh,
yeah, I guess it's true whenit really wasn't right. You know.
So, how can like someone who'slistening right now and wants to help out?
Now I know you are a nonprofit, so they can definitely go
to Shelter Animals count dot org andthey can make a donation, right that

(14:37):
would help? Like what else canpeople do if they want to get involved
and help? Absolutely so? Andactually we are funded primarily through grants in
national organizations who who need the statedto do their work, and so what
I would really encourage people who wantto do to help is to support their

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local shelter. They do not needto donate to us at all. We
really encourage them to donate to theBoots from the ground. And really,
unfortunately the message is still the same. It's not new, and there's sometimes
people are disappointed that we don't havea new thing that we need we want
us to ask for. But thetop four things that people can do are

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adapt, foster, volunteer, anddonate and that to all or any or
one organization that they feel really closelyaligned with, because truly, every single
shelter is in crisis right now andthey're struggling with more animals in their care
than they have been in more thanfive years, and with fewer staff,

(15:46):
fewer donations, fewer volunteers, andfewer fosters than ever. And so it's
really that perfect storm of everything goingwrong at once, and the easiest way
to change that is through those fourcategories of adapt, foster, volunteer,
and donate. That's perfect. Well, Stephanie, thank you so much.
Thank you for all your knowledge andall your information, and keep doing what

(16:06):
you do. And I would loveto talk to you again because you know
I'm fascinated with all of this informationand and I know my listeners are as
well, So again, adopt,foster, volunteer, or donate very simple
things that anybody can do. SoStephanie Fyler, thank you so much.
From Shelter Animals Count, the Nationaldatabase. Thank you for all that you

(16:26):
do, and keep keep keep atit because we need you and we need
all of this information. So thankyou, thank you. We're happy to
be here. And yeah, checkout our website at Shelter Animals Count dot
org and you can dig into theinformation yourself and check out what's going on
in your own are yet