A Cavalier King Charles spaniel found in a crate in West Hartford.
An allegedly malnourished German shepherd found tied up on the side of the road in Plainfield.
An allegedly severely neglected dog found in East Hartford that had to be euthanized.
It seems that abandoned dogs, and sometimes cats, are discovered weekly across the state.
But they are the visible symbols of larger problems facing pet owners and animal control officers, say those in the animal welfare field.
They include families who can’t afford to keep their pets, largely because of the high cost of veterinary care. Others were not necessarily properly vetted before they were allowed to adopt their pets, said Jillian Cappabianca, animal control officer for East Hartford.
She said the numbers of animals being impounded have doubled since she started 11 years ago.
“We’ve had a huge increase in animals being abandoned or dumped or there’s (those) that we find astray that we don’t necessarily know that they were abandoned,” she said. “They might be just lost, but a lot of times, people are just not coming to get the animals anymore.”
East Hartford shares the Tyler Regional Animal Care Shelter in South Windsor with that town and Manchester.
“Some weeks we impound five or 10 animals,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve gone a week without impounding an animal.”
Cappabianca said the animals are found in a variety of situations.
“There’s animals that people are tying up places and leaving them behind,” she said. “There’s some cases where there’s evictions and people are leaving animals in the apartments. There’s also … the animals that are running loose that we pick up, and we don’t really know if those people let them loose on purpose, which is probable in a lot of cases, or if they’re just lost and need to be reunited with their families.”
The Tyler shelter, which has kennels for about 20 dogs, is usually near capacity, Cappabianca said, so it often can’t accommodate people who arrive and ask to surrender their pets. “However, whenever people do call us, we work together with them to try to find the right solution,” she said.
“A lot of times, we try to figure out why people are trying to get rid of their animals, and try to help them find a way to keep their animals, even if it’s training advice or helping them find care at low cost of that care for their animals,” she said. “We work with a lot of different organizations that offer different options like that.”
Some people want to give up their pets because they say they don’t have time to care for them, Cappabianca said. “Which is unfortunate because at our facility, we do the best that we can to make sure that all the animals are getting the right exercise, but they’re still being unattended for most of the day. … They’re probably getting more attention in the home.”
One source of the problem is that a lot of pets for sale arrive from the South and are taken home at adoption events held by rescue groups, advocates said.
“I think that a lot of people who are adopting dogs, they’re not being properly vetted ahead of time, meaning that the groups adopting these dogs out and the breeders who are selling these dogs are not necessarily looking into the adopter’s background enough to determine whether or not they’re a good fit for that breed or they’re a good home for a dog or cat in general,” Cappabianca said.
“It’s very easy to get pets these days, but a lot of people just don’t have that knowledge of what it actually takes to own a pet. And once they find out that they either can’t do it or they need help doing it, the rescue groups won’t take the dogs back, and the people don’t really have anywhere to turn,” she said.
Laura Burban, animal control officer for Branford , said the town’s expanded Dan Cosgrove Animal Shelter, which opened in 2023, is often at least 80% full. She said “every aspect of what we do” has increased in recent years.
She said the shelter may take in five to 20 animals a week.
“Animals being abandoned, animals needing to be given up because of medical issues that the people cannot afford,” she said. “There’s a lot of people reaching out to us who definitely adopted during COVID and either no longer want the responsibility or can’t afford having an animal, or … they’re moving.”
Burban said one problem related to abandoned dogs is that the number of people adopting pets since the pandemic has gone way down.
“The increase in abandonment and the quote-unquote stray animals is, I think, really caused by the fact that the shelters are full and people are not adopting,” she said.
“We saw an increase, obviously, in adoptions during COVID and it was a supply-and-demand type of thing, and now we’re on the other end of it, where people that did adopt don’t even want the animals that they have and are giving them up,” she said.
Cosgrove has 20 dog kennels and 50 cat condos, and Burban said a lot of the animals they take in are cats.
“Cats seem to be coming in at an alarming rate compared to everything else for us, and it’s partially caused by the fact that we are one of the only shelters in the state that actually takes in cats,” she said. Cosgrove may have between 75 and 125 cats at one time.
“And then we also take in critters and livestock as well,” Burban said. “So we have bunnies, guinea pigs, anything from turtles to snakes. And we also will take in goats and sheep and ducks and chickens, things like that.”
While Burban and her staff find abandoned animals in town, “we’re also finding that people are calling, emailing, messaging us on Facebook,” she said. “I have people who are texting us staff members, just saying they have to give up their animals. … It’s kind of overwhelming, because everybody is full and so people are just reaching out from everywhere.”
That includes people from other towns, whose shelters are full, Burban said. “There’s not a town we don’t get calls from … from places like Sharon, Connecticut, all the way from West Hartford, Killingworth, you just name it. Mystic. It makes no difference. People are calling everywhere because they just run out of options.”
The calls also from other animal control officers who are trying to avoid euthanizing the animals they have, Burban said.
“Connecticut’s not known for being a state that historically would euthanize for space, but we’re finding shelters in the state now that are just overwhelmed and over capacity are having to euthanize,” she said.
Branford gets calls because of its capacity and staffing, Burban said.
“They call us because we tend to have higher adoption rates, plus, a lot of these shelters operate on, say, one part-time animal control officer, and so they may only be open to the public a few hours a day, or maybe even two days a week, where we’re open seven days a week, so we have the ability to find more animals homes than they would just because of a lack of resources,” she said.
One reason for so many animals being surrendered is the high cost of veterinary care, Burban said.
“Vet care has gone up so much in pricing, so it’s difficult for people to be able to afford to take care of their animals,” she said. “That’s why we believe, not only because people adopted during COVID, but … we believe that they’re being abandoned because it’s just too much of a cost to take care of the animals through the veterinarians, and so they’re just feeling overwhelmed.”
According to MarketWatch , based on the American Pet Products National Pet Owners Survey, Connecticut has the highest average veterinary visit cost in the country, at $93.44. Efforts to contact a veterinarian for this story were unsuccessful.
‘People are desperate’
Peyton Winter, director of canine behavior programs for Our Companions Animal Rescue and Sanctuary , said she can’t say for sure whether there’s an increase in abandoned pets, but it appears to be true.
“I don’t know if there’s any data to support that there’s an increase, but we’re definitely seeing on our end, something our staff talks about a lot, is that we’re feeling a lot more inundated with cases,” she said. Our Companions has a program center in Manchester and a sanctuary in Ashford.
“Our helpline is a number that people can call for any animal-related concern, and in terms of staff on the helpline, we are definitely seeing a lot of calls from pet guardians looking to find homes for their animals,” Winter said.
“Our rehoming calls are definitely up, and the people who are calling both for cat and dog rehoming I would probably describe them as exasperated. They’ve called everywhere,” she said.
“A lot of those calls have to do with cost of care, maybe some behavioral concerns that they’re facing, a change in lifestyle or habit,” she said. “We have programs for that, but, right now, with the cost of veterinary care and everything, we’re definitely seeing a high volume of calls for people looking to rehome their animals.”
Our Companions works with animal control officers to conduct behavioral assessments, Winter said.
“I can just say from working with ACO officers that a lot of them are inundated, and I would say there’s a level of stress in the community about the increases that they’re reporting with both calls of people trying to surrender their animals, which most shelters are not able or set up to do.”
Winter feels strongly that people who abandon their pets should not be demonized.
“I’m very passionate within my own work here is thinking about the human-animal bond, and trying to get away from this idea that the people who are making these choices should be villainized,” she said.
“I think a lot of times we see these abandoned animals and it creates this social media uproar of, how could this person do this and what a horrible person, but with … the amount of community work that we do and the calls that we get, I mean, people are desperate,” she said.
Many of the animals, including a cat recently dropped off, are in good health and appear well taken care of.
“We were talking about how lovely he is,” Winter said. “He was incredibly friendly, incredibly well adjusted, clearly well taken care of, beautiful coat, no observable health issues. … I think a lot of people think that these abandoned or stray animals are being neglected or abused … but I think in a lot of cases, they’re just people who don’t know what else to do.”
While there was a large increase in adoptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, the situation has turned around, Winter said.
“Right now we’re seeing a lot of really drastic decrease in adoption rates across our programs, and that’s something that I think across the industry people are recognizing,” she said. “Our rescues are full, we’re not moving dogs as quickly as we were, dogs and cats. … I don’t know if the data or the numbers would support that, but it’s something that’s felt.”
As for abandoned animals, Winter said a lot of times they are left in public spaces, their owners hoping they’ll be taken in by someone.
“I just think if someone really genuinely was just like, I just don’t want this animal anymore, that there wouldn’t be as much thought into, Is someone going to find this animal?” she said. “The cat we got dropped off today was dropped off in a cat carrier with really high-quality cat food. It wasn’t just dropped in a cardboard box.”
James Bias, executive director of the Connecticut Humane Society , said the state Department of Agriculture doesn’t separate owner-surrendered, stray and abandoned animals in its statistics, but he believes adoptions are declining.
“It’s a single-digit number across the country, and the same here in Connecticut, but it’s still a significant number if you’re a shelter with only five or six kennels, and here in Connecticut each of the towns have different shelter setups,” he said.
“It may be a partnership with multiple communities, a regional shelter. It may be a couple of kennels back behind the police department, because most of these agencies’ services fall under the police department,” he said.
“For decades now, the Connecticut Humane Society has managed its intake, meaning we have to have space in order to take a pet in, and if we’re at capacity for the type of pet that they’re trying to bring in, we may offer up other alternatives,” Bias said.
“We also go through and say, OK, so why are you giving up your pet? And if it’s to treat for a medical purpose or condition, we may try to run them through our Fox Memorial Clinic in Newington and see if we can treat it and get it back with its original family,” he said.
If someone has lost their job or otherwise can’t afford to feed their pet, “we have our pet food pantry so we can look to try to give them a bridge of food for a few months until they can get back on their feet,” Bias said. “And so, it’s not just a transaction of surrender and rehome. We’re trying to find out why the pet is being surrendered and what we can do to try to keep it in that family.”
The Humane Society has three shelters, in Newington, Waterford and Westport, which can handle between 150 and 300 animals, Bias said.
“And then the bigger option that we look at is foster homes,” he said. “So if we have an animal that’s going through medical treatment or we’re trying to change a negative behavior, we can try to place them into a foster home so that we’re less likely having to impact our shelter.”
Bias said while the historic function of animal control is to get animals off the street to ensure safety, many were then euthanized.
“Over the last number of years, there’s been a call to action for those shelters to do more to try to have a positive outcome,” he said. “Rehoming, transferring to another group. Close to 30% of the dogs that we take in at Connecticut Humane Society come from our Connecticut animal control shelters.”
Bias cited the Cosgrove shelter in Branford as a progressive shelter. “Even in the middle of the pandemic, they renovated and expanded their shelter, as opposed to just curling up and waiting for the pandemic to end,” he said. “I believe it was 2021 when they started renovation, which was when costs were high, labor was high, but they saw the need for it.”
However, unlike Branford, which answers to the first selectman, most animal control officers fall under the police or fire department, Bias said.
While adoptions rose during COVID, “the data isn’t showing that there was a huge groundswell of surrenders happening post-pandemic,” Bias said.
“The theory behind that is, when somebody acquires a pet, the length of time that they have them, they develop a bond, and then when that bond has a chance for being broken — they chewed the shoes, they chewed the couch — that’s when the surrender may happen,” he said. “The longer they’ve had them, the greater that bond.”
Bias said many people worked at least partially at home for more than a year, “which gave a tremendous opportunity to create a very strong bond, so much so that that now has impacted the veterinary community in a bigger way, because the capacity and need for veterinary care, for example, skyrocketed,” he said.
There was a strain on veterinarians, who weren’t graduating in numbers equal to the need, and also on pet food manufacturers.
Bias had advice for people who are having difficulties with their pet and feel a need to surrender it.
“One is letting people know, don’t expect the shelter immediately to be able to take your animal upon demand, because they’re at capacity. That we know is true,” he said.
“Two, people need to think if their issue can be remedied through a bridge of some kind of bag of food and medical treatment,” he said. “Seek advice from the Connecticut Humane Society or your local animal welfare group and see what resources do they have.
“These pet owners made a commitment, I would hope, to keep that pet for its life, and if for some reason they’re not able to keep the pet, they’re the best person, best family to know what the next family would look like,” Bias said. “Try to find a home yourself. If not, then look to the shelter as a resource.”
Local News
Comments / 0