The Bloomington Animal Shelter has space both inside and outside to keep the dogs that come into the shelter. (Isabella Vesperini)
Bloomington’s Animal Shelter is struggling to meet demand for people wanting to bring their dogs into the shelter.
Virgil Sauder, director of animal care and control at the Bloomington Animal Shelter, said the need for space for dogs in the shelter has increased this spring, and is more than what they have space for. The shelter is at capacity, caring for between 200 and 250 animals that are either in the shelter or in foster homes.
Between 40 and 50 dogs are on the waitlist to get into the shelter.
Sauder said shelter officials have seen an increase over the last year or so, which he attributes to housing and economic issues.
“Dogs are more expensive than cats and harder to house for people that are needing to move in with family members or friends for financial reasons or into apartments, so there's just a lot more need for them currently,” he said. “And so that is going to put a strain on our shelter for probably many years to come.”
Annually, dog owners can expect to spend between $1,390 and $5,295 to have a dog. Costs could rise as much as 7 percent this year, but the cost to adopt a dog has decreased. It costs $100 to adopt a dog at the animal shelter in town. A recent report found that 43 percent of respondents site overall cost as the biggest challenge in deciding whether to own a pet. Those who make under $75,000 were more likely to give that reason, and were also most likely to give their pet to a shelter.
Sauder said the animal shelter has to deal with other outside factors that make the waitlist even longer. The warm weather brings more strays. People leaving town for spring break need to leave their dog somewhere. They have also seen more cases of dog-bite incidents. State law requires dogs who bite a human to quarantine for 10 days at a facility that is not the dog’s home. Sauder said there is only so much space at the shelter to keep these dogs.
“We don't have that space to move animals through, as far as strays or owners that need rehoming help, so it just kind of gums things up a bit,” he said.
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To manage demand, Sauder said he is lowering the barriers to adoption. The shelter has a Foster First Adoption Program where people can foster an animal for seven days to see if the animal is a good fit for the home.
“Our hope is to get these animals into permanent homes or better homes, as quickly as they can,” he said. “Shelter, especially for dogs, is a needed place. It's needed to have them here short term, but it is not a long-term solution. I mean, most dogs, if they've been here for two weeks, you start to see mental and behavioral issues start to rise, because this is just not natural for them, and so we try to get them in homes as soon as possible.”
Casey Green has been fostering dogs for about a decade. She is currently fostering five dogs from the animal shelter: Morty, Serena Jasmine, Daisy, Rainbow Dash and Apple Blossom. She adopted Eleanor six years ago. She has fostered as many as 12 at a time.
“It’s fun,” she said. “They do on some level, help socialize and take care of each other, which is really good. Eleanor is really experienced with that, and like giving a lot of socialization that I couldn't give because they learn better from other dogs.”
Rainbow Dash and Apple Blossom are only two weeks old. Green has to feed them every two to four hours, and as a result doesn’t get much sleep.
“It's just kind of an around the clock schedule,” she said.
Even though it can be overwhelming to take care of a lot of dogs at a time, Green thinks bringing dogs into the home when they are young helps them learn to be around other humans.
“A lot of times shelters, even the best ones, don't bring out the best in dogs,” she said. “It's scary, it's stressful, and you don't really see who a dog is until they've had time to compress in a home, which can be like three weeks to three months.”
The shelter’s long wait list concerns Green and makes her feel hopeless. She tries to spread the word about fostering and adopting as much as possible to help dogs find homes.
“It makes me feel like I'm not doing enough, or like maybe I could take more,” she said. “…But at the same time, you can only do so much. I feel like every time I go to pick up fosters, there's someone else trying to relinquish and I'm having to watch staff try to have that conversation about there being a wait list, and people don't understand, because they feel very desperate.”
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Green understands it may be necessary to relinquish a dog if it isn’t fitting well with the household or if the person isn’t well-equipped to take care of it. When it comes to financial stress, she recommends people take advantage of the resources available to them so the dog can stay in the home as long as possible.
“Right before I started fostering, I lost my job, I had to withdraw from school. I had family crises that I was dealing with, and I couldn't afford food, and I couldn't afford vet care,” she said, “and so I went to the Humane Association, and they gave me food and I was able to keep her and there have been times I couldn't afford vaccinations, so I've taken them to the Humane vet clinic, and that doesn't take the place of like having a vet, but even this last year, we couldn't get an appointment when I needed to for Eleanor, so that's where she got her vaccinations.”
Nationally in 2024, dog adoptions decreased 5 percent from the previous year. While Bloomington’s Animal Shelter hasn’t seen any decrease in adoptions, Sauder is worried that fewer people will want to adopt dogs in the future.
“We will see larger euthanasia rates; likely those will be on animals that have mild behavior or training needs that we're not able to meet because of the animals that we need to make space for to come in,” he said. “We will see animals that we're not going to be able to help, and we're already seeing a few of those.”
To address the overcrowding issue, Sauder recommends owners get their pet spayed or neutered to avoid causing another litter.
On the other hand, demand for adopting cats has remained high. Shelter Animals Count reports that 2.6 million cats were adopted in 2023, over 319,000 more than in 2019. Nearly 40 percent of respondents said they’d more likely adopt a cat because they require less maintenance and personal preference. It’s also less expensive to have a cat as a pet; it costs $90 to adopt a cat from Bloomington’s Animal Shelter. One can expect to spend about $634 per year on a cat.
Sauder isn’t as worried about not finding foster homes for cats, especially with the Foster First Program.
“If we have a cat that has an upper respiratory infection, traditionally, we would keep it here at the shelter until it's recovered from that infection, and then adopt it out,” Sauder said. “With this foster model, if there's somebody interested in adopting, we would sign them up as a foster of that animal. First get them into the home where they're going to recover quicker, help provide the treatment in the vet care, and then when that's done, finalize the adoption.”
