The Soaring Rate of Abandoned Animals Is the Latest Sign of a Deep Economic Crisis

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted April 28, 2009.

For many such animals, the difference may boil down to a slow death versus a quick one. "Owner surrenders don't have a chance," dog rescue worker Jacki Lugg tells me over the phone, referring to pets who are given up by their owner (and thus not being searched for). "If an owner turns (a pet) in to a shelter, they are often put down immediately."

Lugg is the South Jersey co-founder of a dog rescue agency that specializes in rat terriers. One of countless animal rescue workers with anecdotes that point to a rise in pet surrenders in recent months -- "I just see an influx of e-mails from all different breed groups and the word URGENT comes across a lot more frequently than it used to" -- the sad phenomenon has hit close to home. Literally.

"The house down the street from me was foreclosed, and they left their dogs in there," she said. "I actually went into the house, and there were claw marks on the doors, the floors were stained with feces and urine. It's heartbreaking to think of the dogs in panic. It's awful."

As "one cog in the wheel in a whole national network" of rescue agencies, Lugg says she has heard a lot of workers discuss the rise in animals victimized by the economic crisis. "Normally, what we do is take dogs from shelters," she said. "But what we're seeing lately is owners coming directly to us because they can't keep their dogs." The No. 1 reason for this increase in owner surrenders: "The owners couldn't afford them anymore."

Lugg says that many have cited foreclosures as the reason for giving up their pets, but that it's impossible to know for sure. "People are writing to us saying that they're losing their homes, and they don't even know where they are going to go," she said. But then, "people falsify things. You don't know if they're just invoking the word 'foreclosure.' "

Indeed, some shelter workers believe that "foreclosure pets" are being used as "a politically correct way of surrendering animals without judgment."

According to one spokesman for a San Diego animal shelter that conducted a poll of other shelters in other parts of the country, "When the shelters actually looked at their numbers, they found there weren't any more pets being surrendered than there had been one year ago. The excuses for surrender now being used most often were the economy and home foreclosure," he told the Denver Post.

To be sure, animals have been abandoned long before the current housing crisis. But whatever the reason, there's no imagining the alarming increase being reported since last year.

"We used to be able to (link pet surrenders) to a season," Lugg said. "There's a Christmas dumping season and then there's the almost-summer-vacation season … During those two distinct times, we used to see a spike." But five months after the holidays, it hasn't slowed down. "It's a big mountain now," she said.

More animals, fewer adoptions?

Sean Casey Animal Rescue sits on a short block in the mostly residential Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Windsor Terrace. On New York's first hot Saturday of the year, shortly after opening hours, a crowd of volunteers, kids and couples ready to adopt milled around the front entrance.

Home to dogs, cats, birds and a variety of reptiles, Sean Casey occupies two compact storefronts and an adjacent lot, where on this particular day, a pair of pit bulls shared space with three tortoises. According to one employee named Freddy, whose daughter volunteers at the shelter, they have seen a lot more animals come in recent months. He repeats what others have said: people can't afford to take care of them. "Lots of people are moving out of their homes, moving into apartments that don't allow pets," he told me as he washed out cages.

Viviane Arzoumanian, a trainer who volunteers at the shelter concurs. "Certainly in the rescue community there's a lot of discussion and concern about the number of animals (being surrendered)," she says. "Some of it is because people lost their homes." But general economic hardship, combined with costly pet care is also taking its toll. "The kinds of things that we're seeing is people who are giving up their pets because they need expensive veterinary care," she says. Of course, "having a dog is expensive even if there aren't health issues."

See more stories tagged with: pets, recession, economic crisis, humane society, dogs, cats, foreclosure pets, animal shelters, no paws left behind, sean casey animal rescue, aspca, stephen zawistowski, american society for the , betsy saul, petfinder.com, viviane arzoumanian, subprime mortage crisis, jacki lugg

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