Days in care

I'm starting this blog by introducing a brand-new report I call the "Days in Care" report. It looks, specifically, at the animals in a shelter on the last day of the month and calculates the average number of days these animals have been in the care of that shelter. This report includes animals in foster but eliminates animals that have been in care for over one year. In doing so we can balance between organizations with extra long stays, yet account for the fact that foster animals still need services and placements. As you can see, animals are being "warehoused" with both cats and dogs at an alarming rate. Dogs are now staying 18 days longer than they were at the highest point - the start of the pandemic. Cats are particularly interesting; because of their seasonality, we have short stays when intake is high (Summer), while stays can increase dramatically when intake is low (Winter). For September, shelters are at levels more indicative of December, which is extremely concerning.

While looking at the situation across animal welfare organizations, we might think there are outside forces creating this situation, but that's just not the case. We hit a particularly important milestone in September, where overall intakes and outcomes dropped below 2020. This would normally be a great thing, but it continues to be driven by the significant drop in Transfers both into and out of shelters. While overall intakes dropped year over year by 8.2% for cats and 0.4% for dogs, the drop for transfers was significant at 8.7% for cats and 11.1% for dogs.

With overall intakes down, it is only obvious that outcomes will follow that same trend. The question is always, "Can we expect a positive outcome for these pets?" Unfortunately, it is not a good situation. While transfer out continues to drop, 14.0% for cats and 7.1% for dogs, adoption numbers year over year are about flat, for both cats and dogs.

In exploring the Euthanasia numbers, surprisingly, after running above 2020 levels since April, cats are just below where they were a year ago. Dogs are not so lucky as they continue to be euthanized at a rate above those of 2020.

This is all to highlight some of the significant trends I have noticed simply, but I encourage you to take a deeper dive into the data on our data dashboard at services.24pet.com/ShelterWatch/. Note: This tool is still in beta.