Laura Clark gets up at the crack of dawn every day, before putting on a pair of well-worn working boots and heading down to Colleton County Animal Shelter in Walterboro.
Clark and her team of 15 paid staff then take on the enormous task of cleaning up after, exercising, arranging veterinary care for, and feeding the more than 300 domestic animals—ranging from cats to rabbits—they've rescued from across their South Carolina county.
Surprisingly, there is one creature that by far outnumbers all the other animals-in-need residing at Clark's shelter: dogs.
"We only have 65 permanent dog kennels. Technically, we would keep five open at all times for new dogs, so our capacity is really 60. At the moment we have 195 dogs in our care, 141 of which are at the shelter full-time," Clark, director of Colleton County Animal Shelter, told Newsweek. She added that dogs also take up half of the shelter staff's workload.
Indeed, Clark's shelter has been over capacity for two years now, she said, and her 15 staff, including four animal control officers, are now caring for 81 more dogs than they have the capacity for. Historically, the shelter has welcomed even numbers of cats and dogs, but dogs have largely exceeded the number of incoming cats since 2021.
While Colleton County Animal Shelter may simply look busy to outsiders, Clark said the root cause of the overload shelters are now facing is not intake numbers or return rates, which she said have remained in line with pre-pandemic levels, but rather a concerning drop in adoptions.
"When I first started working, the shelter took in over 3,000 pets per year, which has come down to around 2,000. The numbers have drastically reduced," Clark said.
She said adoptions, particularly of dogs, have plummeted nationwide for reasons ranging from sky-high living costs in the current economic environment to unethical breeding.
Our capacity is really 60. At the moment we have 195 dogs in our care.
"There used to be plenty of demand for puppies, and dogs were rapidly adopted, but now that living costs have gone up less people are adopting and buying puppies which is why we need to step in and care for those left behind," Clark said.
Indeed, the "bailing out of breeders" who find themselves unable to home litters is adding to the shelter's heavy workload, which includes up to four hours of rigorous cleaning per day.
Clark said at-home breeding has become an attractive business idea to many in the rural South where her shelter is based—and is contributing to the crisis.
"I have many friends who support the work we do and care about the dogs, but they're breeding maltipoos and labradoodles! They don't see the harm in that. We should be able to have the dogs we want, but it has complicated matters," she said.
The trouble begins when the new dogs being bred to appease a nation's love for canine companions can't be placed in suitable homes in the current cost of living crisis.
'We Have Been Over Capacity For Two Years'
The rate of inflation peaked at 9.1 percent in the summer of 2022, while wages trailed behind and fluctuated on a smaller scale. Although the U.S. economy began to recover in 2023 from the hit wages took in 2022, largely off the back of the pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, many Americans have struggled to get back on their feet.
While on the outside San Diego may look entirely different to South Carolina, with its glittering Pacific beaches and closer proximity to Los Angeles, humane groups in California are grappling with the exact same sheltering crisis.
Jessica Gercke, communications director of the Helen Woodward Animal Center in San Diego, voices similar concerns about the unexpected drop in adoption numbers, and the pressure staff are facing as a result.
Unlike the shelter Clark directs, Gercke's is not open-access and as a private nonprofit organization relies on its own funding so can turn animals-in-need away when full to the brim. Alternatively, shelters dependent on government grants are obliged to lend a helping hand to others, even if they have already reached capacity.
At any given time, Helen Woodward houses between 79 and 100 animals, the majority of which are dogs, while over 200 "well paid staff with medical care" tend to them.
Still, Gercke reports what she describes as a previously unseen overload to Newsweek.
She also points the finger at lowered adoption levels. The dogs that Helen Woodward have a history of rescuing and swiftly placing with families are now more likely than ever to remain within the shelter's confines.
"Over in the adoptions building right now, we probably have 30 or 40 people at work. Not to mention in the administrative offices and all the other departments associated, but it just can't sustain itself because of how much adoption rates have dropped," Gercke told Newsweek.
"The fact that we're not seeing a rise in intake doesn't mean that we're not seeing higher numbers inside the shelter and that we're not getting heartbreaking calls from people everywhere."
"The messages that we're getting are awful...The sheltering sector is under an enormous amount of stress," she added.
Gercke has been working at Helen Woodward for over a decade, and was used to seeing eager pet-parents stream in and out of the facility's adoption center at a seemingly non-stop rotation. She told Newsweek this ground to a halt as families in the U.S. continue to struggle with living costs after inflation reached a 40-year peak in 2022, even though wage growth overall began outstripping inflation again in March 2023.
"For the first time our adoption center is now closed for part of the week, simply because the number of adoptions were not justifying paying the number of people that we need to run the adoption center," she said.
Gercke's personal take on the dilemma is that high living costs, particularly in parts of California, have turned some people off the once rosy prospect of welcoming a new pet into their home.
The messages that we're getting are awful.
Almost 100 percent of the animals Helen Woodward houses came from other shelters in the U.S. The organization aims to pull rescues from high-kill shelters in Southern states, and bring them under California's tight animal protection laws. While the crisis is nationwide, as South Carolina-based Clark told Newsweek, it appears to be concentrated in the South.
As a private organization, Helen Woodward is able to turn away the animals it can't rehome. However, before full capacity has been reached it's still tasked with supporting other shelters that aren't able simply to pull the ladder up.
"We take puppies and kittens that a lot of other shelters can't because of space, time and financial constraints," Gercke said.
Lisa LaFontaine is the chief executive officer of the Humane Rescue Alliance in Washington, D.C. The organization specializes in animal rescue and adoption services, and has in the past decades merged with smaller rescue organizations to provide regional, community-based animal welfare. Newsweek contacted LaFontaine through one of her merger centers, St. Hubert's Animal Welfare.
"The current capacity issue certainly isn't about intake," she told Newsweek.
"While intake is higher than it was in 2020 and higher than in 2021, it's actually at the same level it was pre-pandemic. The real issue is that adoptions are down."
She said adoption used to be an "ecosystem," where it was very predictable when people would consider adopting a pet. She worries that the pandemic pet boom, or "surge in acquisition" as it's called in the sheltering community, has disrupted the natural rhythm.
'We're Getting Heartbreaking Calls From People'
While the hashtag #AdoptDontShop—a call to action for prospective pet parents to visit their local shelter rather than a breeder—has now become something of an online slogan, and you can hardly scroll through social media without coming across yet another animal rescue account, the reality inside America's animal shelters is stark in comparison.
The real issue is that adoptions are down.
LaFontaine said adoptions at her organizations had fallen by 28 percent, when comparing the current year to statistics from 2019.
"Although adoption has dropped, the narrative about people returning 'pandemic pets' is not the issue. Our return rate is only 2 percent. The problem is that people are not adopting in the first place now," she said.
"The challenge for rescue groups is to figure out how to lower barriers to adoption and make it more convenient without compromising the animal's welfare. We're also thinking about social media and how we can alter our adoption marketing to Gen Z and how they acquire pets."
Like LaFontaine, Clark has been tracking the situation over time. She said the clampdown on many kill shelters had led to the rising numbers of dogs they are seeing today. She too believes that an adoption boom could solve the problem.
"Thirteen years ago, they were euthanizing 90 percent of the animals that came into their care. Those animals went over to the landfill to avoid overcrowding, and this became more prevalent in the South," Clark said.
Over time, Clark's shelter and others cut back on the number of dogs they were putting to sleep. Clark argues this is a positive change and one that came around after social media allowed outsiders the opportunity to hold others to account. Suddenly, animal shelters were being held to a different ethical standard.
On a humane level, Clark is overjoyed to see more dogs survive the shelter system and more animal-loving staff join the animal welfare sector, but the altered protocol has led to overcrowding at the shelters that simply cannot turn animals-in-need away.
While teams at all the shelters Newsweek spoke with are keen to experiment with social media to entice potential adopters, LaFontaine urges those keen to adopt in the current drought to assess where they are getting an animal from, and not to fall into online traps masquerading as reputable organizations.
As employees in the animal welfare sector are racing to boost adoption rates and get the crisis under control, Gercke mourns what used to be.
"I remember when we used to open the doors to our adoption center and there would be a line outside of people waiting to get the dogs. Nowadays, many of those dogs would still be here weeks later," she said.
Clark, Gercke, and LaFontaine fear that some of the dogs that have been left behind will never find a home.
Correction 11/29/2023, 03:03 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to correct information about Colleton County Animal Shelter's intake.
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About the writer
Melissa Fleur Afshar is a Newsweek Life and Trends Reporter based in London, United Kingdom.
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