Stay-home orders are a new-home lifeline for dogs. One Idaho animal shelter is empty
For the past few days, Josh Heinz has been greeted by an unfamiliar silence when he arrives at the Pocatello animal shelter in the morning.
“The dogs know I’m here when I come in the door, so they’ll bark,” said Heinz, the director of Pocatello Animal Services, in a phone interview.
But since Saturday, the shelter’s dog kennels have been empty. For the first time in Heinz’s 16-year tenure with the shelter — and perhaps for the first time ever — the Pocatello animal shelter has found homes for all of its adoptable dogs. It’s part of a trend across the country as Americans, many working from home or feeling isolated during the coronavirus pandemic, are adopting shelter pets at a fast pace.
“I think we’re finding that adoptions are going up during this because people are at home and thinking, ‘Oh, I have time to spend with that animal,’” Heinz said.
The Pocatello shelter had two adoptable dogs left last week. Both found homes on Saturday.
“When they came in and said, ‘All of our dogs are gone’ ... it was kind of a shock,” Heinz said.
According to Heinz, the shelter generally houses 20 to 30 dogs at any time. Animal Services moved to its current building, at 3100 Avenue of the Chiefs, in 2015. The facility can hold more than 70 dogs.
“The only time I’ve seen these kennels empty is when we transitioned over, and that was before we moved the animals,” Heinz said. “We’ve come close (to adopting out all our dogs), but never empty.”
He said animal control officers continue to pick up stray animals, but each of the dogs they’ve found since Saturday has been quickly reunited with its owner.
The entire shelter isn’t empty, though. Heinz said there were still about 25 adoptable cats as of Thursday — a huge reduction from their normal population of around 100 cats.
“We were super happy all of our dogs found their forever homes, and we’re hoping to do the same for our cats,” Heinz said.
The empty kennels might be attributed in part to the fact that the shelter has slowed its intake. Heinz said Pocatello Animal Services asked owners to try to keep pets they’d otherwise surrender for the duration of Gov. Brad Little’s shelter-in-place order to keep contact between owners and shelter employees to a minimum. He said staff are preparing for a potential surge in animals coming to the shelter when normal operations resume.
In the meantime, they’re conducting adoptions on an appointment-only basis, much like Boise’s Idaho Humane Society, which has seen its dogs adopted within hours of becoming available, according to spokeswoman Kristine Schellhaas.
“The first week (of the shelter-in-place order), we were not doing adoptions,” Heinz said. “We were just holding on to the animals, and we didn’t think that was fair to the animals. Once we decided to start doing adoptions by appointments, our appointments skyrocketed. In the first week, we filled our appointments probably within the first day.”
