Running low on space and funds, Columbia Gorge animal shelters share challenges

According to the national database Shelter Animal Counts, the number of dogs and cats awaiting adoption at animal shelters grew by nearly 250,000 last year. Meanwhile, the rate of adoption for dogs has decreased, with nearly 60% of shelter operators reporting requests from owners to surrender their dogs. As reported in Columbia Gorge News, Hood River Adopt a Dog and Home At Last Humane Society in The Dalles are emblematic of the challenges animal shelters are currently facing, including a surge in the number of dogs being surrendered or simply abandoned at their doorstep.

Joining us to talk about these difficulties are: Laura Spinney, operations director and foster coordinator for Hood River Adopt a Dog; Sierra Molesworth, a certified dog trainer and the social media manager at Hood River Adopt a Dog; and Lisa Erland, board treasurer at Home At Last Humane Society.

Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We end today with the big increase of shelter dogs and cats. This is a nationwide phenomenon. According to the group Shelter Animal Counts, there were a quarter of a million more dogs and cats in need of homes in December of 2023 than the year before. Shelters in the Gorge say that is exactly what they are seeing. As reported recently in Columbia Gorge News, Hood River Adopt a Dog and Home At Last Humane Society in The Dalles are both full up. They can’t take in more animals. At the same time, adoption rates are low so the existing dogs and cats have to stay for longer. Laura Spinney is operations director and foster coordinator for Hood River Adopt a Dog. Sierra Molesworth is a certified dog trainer and the social media manager there. And Lisa Erland is the board treasurer at Home At Last. They all join me now. It’s great to have all three of you on the show.

Laura Spinney: Thank you.

Lisa Erland: Great to be here.

Sierra Molesworth: Thank you.

Miller: Laura, first. When did you reach capacity?

Spinney: It probably happened in late summer that we realized that these dogs aren’t moving via adoption. Adoptions just really started to slow down and then we realized, OK, we just don’t have room to put dogs anywhere. So we’ve been there since mid to late summer at capacity.

Miller: You have a little banner at the top of your website right now that says, “We are currently full up. As a result, we are not accepting owner surrenders at this time.” Do people still call you up?

Spinney: Every day.

Miller: What do they say? And what do you say?

Spinney: Well, it’s a tricky position because a lot of people are in a situation that they don’t really have any means to deal with having an animal. So they’re either losing their housing, they just can’t really afford to keep their animal, whether it’s for medical needs or just feeding them. So we try and support the county. We have a food pantry here for the animals and things like that. There’s multiple reasons. People are like, “I’m moving, I can’t take my dog with me.” It’s really a gamut of reasons.

Miller: Lisa Erland, what about in The Dalles? What kinds of reasons do you hear these days for people saying I can’t take care of my dog anymore?

Erland: It’s exactly the same thing that Laura just mentioned. There are different, obvious reasons, but either they’re moving or they can’t afford their animal, which is heartbreaking for the shelter and for the animal as well.

Miller: And I imagine, sometimes for the people themselves.

Erland: Yes.

Miller: What about behavioral issues? I mean, Sierra, this is one of the things that you focus on. Is there a connection between dog training and dogs not ending up in shelters in the first place?

Molesworth: That’s a big subject. A lot of people may not understand the commitment potentially when they get a puppy. They’re cute, fluffy, adorable, but as they age and they get bigger and foundation training isn’t done, it definitely turns into nuisance behavior. As far as reasons go [for] surrendering, dogs behavior is a prominent portion of that as well.

Miller: And what are the behaviors that you see most often that lead people to sort of throw up their hands and say, I can’t take care of this dog anymore?

Molesworth: In this rural area that we’re in, oftentimes it’s dogs getting away from their owner and harassing the neighbors, or just at large. And when that happens and the dog gets picked up by animal control, they have to pay to get their dog out. And sometimes they just stop paying. Confinement, even having your dog come when called back to you is a big challenge for people and a lot of dogs just get away from them and they don’t go get the dog from the shelter.

Miller: If somebody comes to the shelter saying, “I’m fed up. I can’t take care of this dog anymore because their behavior is too challenging.” What do you say to them?

Molesworth: I am always trying to work with people as much as they are willing to put in the effort. I have personally found by the time they reach out to the shelter for behavioral reasons, they are not willing to work on it anymore.

Miller: It’s too late at that point.

Molesworth: For the person, if they wait until the straw has broken the camel’s back kind of thing, they’re completely fed up and done and they don’t want to put in the effort most of the time to salvage their relationship with their dog.

Miller: So in other words, if the relationship were going to be salvaged, it would have to happen before somebody comes to the shelter. By that point, their mind is made up.

Molesworth: For the most part, yes. We do try to work with people. If someone is willing to work on their dog’s behavior, I do offer free consultation so that I can help know the situation and what we can do immediately to improve the dog’s behavior so it can stay in the home. Long-term compliance is very important. There are some behaviors that we can definitely work with in the shelter too. Like a dog, at large, [does not have] a serious behavior issue. That’s a training issue. So we do try to work with people for behavior reasons, dogs that we can actually bring into the shelter and get adopted.

Miller: I want to hear more about the training you do at the shelter, but Laura Spinney back to you. I have to say that I have been a little bit confused by the increase in dogs in shelters now in 2023 and 2024, because the story that I had in my head - and I guess it was wrong - is that in 2020 there was a big spike in adoptions because of the pandemic. And more people were at home, more people wanted companionship. And so a lot of folks got animals, maybe for the first time, or for the first time in a while. Then a lot of folks, as public life reopened or as they went back to the office, realized “I don’t want to” or “I can’t take care of this animal anymore.” And so in 2021 and 2022, there was a spike in returns or people surrendering their animals.

How do you explain the big increase now? I mean, we are a couple years on from that.

Spinney: Yeah. So there’s probably a couple of reasons. We didn’t see a huge increase in surrenders in ‘21 and ‘22. We still had people coming to us to adopt dogs. My adoption application rates were very high. And 2020 and 2021, we have very high application rates for dogs. [In] ‘22, they started to drop off but we’re a small shelter, so that still sort of didn’t affect us greatly. So basically in ‘21, we would have roughly 100 to 130 applications for our dogs a month. In ‘23, we get six to 10 applications a month for our dogs and we have more dogs. And my surrender rate, we didn’t historically track that, like how many people were coming to us asking for us to take their dogs. We started tracking that this past year with an application process. So they had to fill out an application, and then we were able to kind of keep track of the numbers. So I don’t have a previous history of how many people wanted to surrender their dogs in those previous years.

Miller: But it may be that the biggest difference is not in surrenders but in demand for animals to begin with. I mean, you’re talking about an enormous drop in requests for shelter animals.

Spinney: Yep.

Miller: How do you explain that?

Spinney: I don’t know. I mean, I can’t answer that. It’s not like that our county is saturated. I mean, I think there’s always people out there that want dogs but maybe, because everything is more expensive, veterinary costs are more expensive. Vets have to pay their bills too. So it’s just, I think, a bigger picture problem. Housing is limited here. It’s very expensive to live in our county. I think funding is limited for what people can afford. There are a significant amount of stray dogs that come in. It’s hard for us to sort of pinpoint why maybe people are dumping their dogs. But our stray rates are pretty high. What’s really the problem is our return to owner rates are significantly lower. So a dog comes in, a stray is picked up by the animal control officers, brought into our shelter and we hold it for the owner to come and claim it.

Miller: And these are dogs that, say, might be microchipped. You are able to identify who the owner is.

Spinney: If they’re microchipped, we can. The majority of dogs that are found, at large, are not microchipped. And that’s another really big problem that we are trying to figure out a way to remedy. So our return-to-owner rate in 2021 was 85% to 90%, which is really, really good. The national average is generally around 40% from what I’ve been able to figure out. In 2021, our return-to-owner rate, people were getting their dogs back, they wanted their dogs back, they were looking for them. And, ‘23, this year in the fall, our average return-to-owner rate was about 37%. So about the national average, but because we’re a small community, we have a really good ability to post on social media that we have your dog. We have people sharing it all over the place. So people generally will figure out that their dog is in the shelter.

Miller: And they are making the choice to not come and bring them back into their homes.

Lisa Erland, back to you. We’ve been talking about surrenders. That implies that somebody has actually come by to say, “I can’t take care of my dog anymore.” I’m moving or I can’t afford it or their behavior is too challenging. Do people ever just not say anything? Just drop a dog off? Leave them at your doorstep?

Erland: Yes, we’ve unfortunately had that happen. One instance, they tied a dog up by the front door on the post and walked away, drove away. We had surveillance video and they were not from this state. So then it becomes a police effort, but they were from Washington. So it’s heartbreaking to have an animal watch their owner drive away. But yes, that has happened.

Miller: I suppose it also increases a challenge for you if you don’t know anything about the animal’s history, if you don’t know that they’re not great with kids or they have particular behavioral issues. You know nothing about the animal.

Erland: That’s right. And a lot of times you don’t know a lot about the animals if they come in on a stray. So all the way around, you just sometimes don’t know the history. You don’t know if they’ve been vaccinated. But yes, you’re absolutely correct.

Miller: Well, Sierra, this gets to one of your areas of expertise. As a certified dog trainer, what are some of the things that you do at the shelter to help make dogs more adoptable?

Molesworth: We like to get to know them as much as possible. We have daily walks here in Richmond and then we’ll start with some basic training, having dogs hold still for being harnessed and leashed up. We also work on sit, don’t jump on the person, [that] kind of thing. We do get quite a bit of dogs that will bark at other dogs, people. That’s fairly common. So we like to work on those kinds of behaviors as well. We have a very dedicated walking group of volunteers who make sure that the dogs are getting out and getting physical exercise so that they can be more calm. We can build training on top of that. The hard part is them being so excited to come out of their kennel that they are going to jump on you, but that’s not necessarily the root of the problem. We’ve got to get them exercised and work on those basic manners.

Miller: [The] shelter [is] a noisy place, they’re confined much of the day. There’s animals all around them. It’s unfamiliar. Does that make everything harder in terms of training?

Molesworth: Absolutely. Yes, most dogs want to be with their people or with other dogs. They are very social creatures. And so when they do have to be kenneled separately, we have to make sure that we’re giving each of them their individual time, making sure that they’re getting their needs met. And with the shelter being full, we’re divided up. There’s only so many of us versus how many dogs we have. Each dog has their own individual needs that we work really hard to meet. Some dogs need more outside time, some dogs need more training. Some dogs need more cuddles. We focus on each dog as an individual but it gets challenging when we’re so full.

Miller: In addition to doing training, you are also the social media manager for Hood River Adopt a Dog, meaning that you make videos and photos and posts on social media, especially on Instagram, I understand, to attract folks to come and meet the dogs and fall in love with them and take them home. What have you learned about what’s most successful in terms of getting people to be interested in a particular animal?

Molesworth: We focus mostly on video sharing. I make reels and things. We need to see the personality, the person needs to see how silly or goofy or smart or whatever characteristics this dog is. So we have an indoor space that we bring toys out. We try to see if they’ll play with a ball, play with a toy. Maybe they’ll cuddle one of us on the couch. Those things I need to highlight for each individual dog so that people can see their personality a little bit better. A still photo is fine, especially a high quality photo, but people want to see more of the dog. So we’ll also take them out on a walk and let them come kind of run around in the grass, roll around in the grass. Super cute. People need to picture themselves having this dog at home.

So getting them out of the kennel. We have one location, “off campus,” quote unquote, that we’ll go to so that people can picture these dogs in their home, in their yard, on their couch. That’s really the main thing I’m trying to drive home is his personality and this dog being a member of your family.

Miller: Laura, you were talking about the huge decrease in adoption rates which, I imagine, you desperately want to increase, to get these animals out into permanent homes and to make more space for the many animals that are not wanted right now. But is there a tension between getting more animals into homes and making sure that you’re finding the right homes for these animals?

Spinney: Absolutely. And we really work hard at that. We have a pretty rigorous adoption application process that we go through. We have an online application that has a lot of detailed questions about what your life is like. We wanna get a dog to fit into your lifestyle. So a lot of people here want running buddies, biking buddies. We are a very active community, obviously.

Miller: This is Hood River.

Spinney: Yeah, it’s Hood River.

Miller: Water skiing dogs.

Spinney: Yeah. And because Sierra and I spend so much time, as do the volunteers and our staff - we have an amazing group of staff and volunteers here that are just so wonderful to our dogs and I couldn’t do this without them - we really get to know the dogs. Like Sierra was saying, we take them out, we figure out what they like, what their dislikes are and then based on what your application says, I’d call everybody that applies if they applied for a dog that’s still available. And we talk through it like, OK, well, this dog really doesn’t like other dogs. He just needs to be the only dog in the home and if they have other dogs, it just won’t work and it’s not worth pushing the dog to try and live that way because the dog will end up coming back to us. So I’m like, well, this dog likes other dogs. Would you like to meet this dog?

Then we do one on one meet and greets in our building. We go for walks with the people. I had somebody come this weekend and they met three different dogs and they loved them all, and in the end it was hard for them to choose but they chose one that really, really fit their lifestyle. And it doesn’t always work out, so I like to keep in touch with the adopters. I generally reach out to them after they adopt, a few times over the next couple of weeks. And just [ask], how’s it going? I’m here to support you in your adoption with this dog. So we really try to make matches that work. It doesn’t always work, but we want the dog and the person to have the best experience.

Miller: My understanding is that both of your shelters are no-kill shelters. But I’m wondering if [when] you’re full up, if people can’t take their dogs to you, does it mean that somewhere in the system, more animals are being put down right now?

Spinney: Not with us. If I can’t accept an animal, I just can’t accept it. So we try and figure out resources to help the animals stay with the owner until we have a spot open up. That doesn’t always happen. If someone’s trying to relinquish their dog to me because it’s been biting everybody in the neighborhood, I can’t take on that dog because I can’t adopt out a dog that’s biting everybody. And so I tell the people, well, there’s trainers, you can work with trainers.

Unfortunately, I can’t help every dog. Dogs that are adoptable when people try to relinquish them to me, I’ll put them in touch with Sierra. I’m like, I have a trainer you can do a consult with. Maybe there’s some things you guys can do at home to make it better. We have a food pantry. If you don’t have enough money for food, I will supply you with food as much as I can, those sorts of things. Hood River Adopt a Dog is a nonprofit, 100% donation-based shelter. So we really need funding to be able to supply the county with microchip clinics, rabies clinics, spay-neuter clinics. So that’s where we’re really trying to grow things to help people be able to afford to keep their animals. But it’s a hard time right now. There’s not a lot of money out there.

Miller: Laura Spinney, Sierra Molesworth and Lisa Erland, thanks very much.

Spinney: Thank you.

Molesworth: Thank you.

Miller: Laura Spinney and Sierra Molesworth joined us from Hood River Adopt a Dog, Lisa Erland from Home At Last Humane Society in The Dalles. you like to get your podcasts. Our nightly rebroadcast is at 8p.m. Thanks very much for tuning in to Think Out Loud on OPB and KLCC. I’m Dave Miller. Have a great day.

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