Animal shelters within Santa Barbara County are flooded with dogs and cats, prompting an urgent plea for people to adopt or foster to ease the strain of stray or surrendered pets.
Since Jan. 1, Santa Barbara County Animal Services has experienced a 58% increase in animals coming through the doors of its shelters compared to the first quarter of last year.
“These numbers are unprecedented, and they have reached a crisis level,” an email alert sent to thousands of people said.
As of last week, Animal Services had 165 animals in its care, with 120 of those being dogs. Huskies and other large dog breeds make up most of population.
Of these, 23 were brought into SBCAS April 15-16.
Last month, the shelters took in 419 stray animals, compared to 283 in March 2022. Reunification rates remain stable at 28%.
“This is what’s happening across the nation. It’s not unique to Santa Barbara County,” Animal Services Director Sarah Aguilar said.
Similar increases have been seen across the nation for months, but locally, “the massive increases” hit the Central Coast in the fall.
A number of factors likely have led to the increase, including the vast number of first-time adopters during the COVID-19 shutdown now dealing with pets’ problematic behavior or medical issues.
At the same time the cost of everything — groceries, fuel, utilities, etc. — has risen, causing a financial crunch for pet owners trying to survive.
“The storms and stuff didn’t help either,” Aguilar said, noting that the rain and wind damaged fences, leading to some escaped dogs that became strays.
Santa Barbara Humane has seen a 28% increase in owner surrenders so far this year compared to last year, according to Dori Villalon, chief operating officer.
When an owner calls and says they need to surrender a pet, Santa Barbara Humane staff asks questions in hopes of finding a solution to keep the family united.
“We have a variety of things that we can offer,” Villalon said, adding the organization last year provided financial assistance to 4,000 of the 20,000 clients seen at the medical clinics.
“Before we want to take your animal in, we definitely want to work with you to see if we can help you keep your pet,” Villalon said.
The majority of owners who surrender dogs cite behavior as the reason, Villalon said.
For dog owners struggling with behavior problems, Santa Barbara Humane, which has shelters in Santa Barbara and Santa Maria, also offers affordable and free dog training classes.
Santa Ynez Valley Humane and DAWG also has seen owner surrenders of animals spike with seven applications in three days for various reasons including an owner’s death, a pet’s aggression, or housing restrictions, Executive Director Julie Cousino said.
The organization also helps owners rehome pets with social media posts that avoid the animals entering the small shelter.
“I feel like people want shelters to be the last resort, but some people don’t have a lot of options,” Cousino said.
For behavioral problems, the small organization offers a list of trainers, some of which offer discounts for mentioning Santa Ynez Valley Humane and DAWG (Dog Adoption and Welfare Group).
Like its larger counterparts, Santa Ynez Valley Humane and DAWG need more foster homes, which can help provide animals relief from the stress of staying in the shelter.
“One of the things about animal sheltering is it costs us more to keep a pet than it does to resolve a problem and keep a pet with a family,” said Aguilar, who took the helm of the county’s Animal Services division seven months ago.
In various ways, the county shelters work with nonprofit organizations such as the CARE 4 Paws, Santa Barbara Humane and others to fill the gaps.
Care4Paws hosts regular wellness clinics for low-cost vaccines, flea treatment, dewormer, microchips and nail trims along with providing low-cost spay and neuter services throughout the county. The schedule of events can be found here.
In addition to clinics, some organizations have pet food pantries for owners struggling to buy food for their dogs and cats.
The huge influx of animals recently means Animal Services can’t transfer as many cats, dogs and other critters to partner organizations to help get them homes. In March 2022, 75 animals were transferred, compared to 42 this March.
To help reduce the population, Animal Service announced Friday it will waive adoption fees through April. 30, which is designated Adopt A Shelter Pet Day.
The population spike has led to multiple dogs per cages and means staff lacks time to help dogs who might be most at risk of euthanasia.
“If my kennels are only half full, my staff has time to go slow with the dogs that are really scared,” Aguilar said. “They have time to work on a training plan and take a dog out and doing training sessions every day.
“When we’re full, all those things are out the window,” she said.
During a meeting this week, Aguilar said she told staff she didn’t know where they would put the next 10 dogs to arrive at the shelter.
“I don’t have 10 to 20 dogs leaving every day,” she said, explaining the plea for adoptions, fosters, donations and volunteers.
“People are the solution to this problem and I don’t know that people know about it,” she added. “
The county shelters have a live-release rate of 91.1%, a number that dipped to 85.9% in March 2022. The benchmark for no-kill shelter status is 90% or higher, recognizing that some animals have extreme medical or behavioral issues that prevent rehoming.
“Nobody comes to work at an animal shelter because they want to kill things. We come here because we want to help them, we want to save them and we want to make sure their lives are as good as possible,” Aguilar added. “To be faced with some of these challenges it is really heavy.”