Why are pets surrendered?

It's been a long time since my last blog, and I had every intention of writing up an interesting take on 2022 data. What actually happened was that when I looked at that data, it was almost identical to the numbers from 2021 and the second half of 2020. I was super excited to see Shelter Animals Count quickly release their 2022 report: See report here. As usual their numbers are very much in line with our data set. I invite you to interact with our data portal at: https://services.24pet.com/ShelterWatch/.

In the meantime, I was asked to report on reasons for owner surrender. As many know, this is not standardized data. So, to put something together, it required someone (in this case yours truly) to look at the thousands of unique reasons for owner surrender and then categorize them. But before I cover the results of the data, I want to talk a bit about the individual field values I saw as I was doing the analysis.

First, are we choosing field values that are judgmental? Believe it or not, 3 organizations had a value that referred to the owners as "stupid". Now that is definitely an extreme example but how different is "unrealistic expectations"? Dozens of organizations had this equally subjective option. If your organization has not looked at your reasons through a DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging) lens, I would strongly urge you to do so.

Second, is the data actionable? I am amazed at how detailed many of the choices are; there are values for every behavior or family situation. The question I have is, is that data actually used for the rehome of that individual animal or in aggregate for programmatic initiatives? If not, I would say you have way too much detail. An example I loved was the value "Temperament (see memo)". At an aggregated level, understanding the numbers of animals coming in with these issues is important to staffing a behavior team while the "see memo" allows for the details that can support that individual animal. Plus, we know memos are much more likely to be read than a person returning to the intake screen.

With that said, Let's look at the data:

The thing that jumped out at me immediately was that by percentage 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2022 were almost identical. While the total numbers dropped in 2020, the percentages returned to the distribution of reasons. Of course, 2020 is the year of anomalies so seeing housing and family issues make up a larger percentage of intake is not surprising.

The big surprise for me is how much medical of the pet is the factor and financial is not. I should note that field values like "cannot afford medical care" were marked as financial, not medical. My gut tells me that the way we are asking for the reason is skewing our data. What is the root issue? We know that people surrender pets when the human-animal bond is broken (or is never established). What broke that bond? I have a hard time believing the animal being sick is it. It might be the current presenting issue but not the cause. The cause can be the financial burden, access to care or something to that effect.

I was also surprised with the reason "Stray, Cannot Keep". Looking back 5 years, this reason consistently makes up 5% of our data. I completely understand the laws and policies that have formerly stray animals recorded as owner surrenders, but I can't help but wonder if these animals got a fair chance at reunification. Maybe the surrenderer really did their best to find the owner, maybe not. In our shift to focus on keeping pets with their original owners, I hope organizations are paying attention to this. I also want to give a shout out to Petco Love Lost that strongly advocates that all animals, unless seized, should be viewable for lost/found search. The data supports their position.

I hope this blog challenges our movement to really think about the root causes for why animals are surrendered. I would particularly love to see a national discussion on the subject and the setting of common values and how to use that data to better support families and their pets.