The COVID-era animal overadoption — and resulting overabandonment — is still creating havoc and heartbreak at SF pet shelters, which are seeing the highest euthanization rates since 2013 because people are surrendering dogs like mad.  

San Francisco is still suffering from the aftermath of too many people adopting pets during the pandemic and then abandoning them. And this continues to be the case even years after the worst of the pandemic, perhaps even because we are a couple years out from the worst of the pandemic.

The Chronicle examines this in a new analysis today that finds San Francisco is euthanizing more dogs than it has in any year in the last 12 years.

It’s no secret why. As SF Animal Care & Control notes in the above tweet from March, they’re dealing with pretty epic levels of shelter overcrowding. It is of course also a factor that the cost of veterinary care has skyrocketed, and some people just can’t afford thousands of dollars (or even tens of thousands of dollars) to care for an ailing dog. But it’s also a matter of timing. Many veterinarians had to close up shop early in the pandemic, and neutering kind of came to a halt. That’s led to a sort of puppy “baby boom,” that’s currently producing tragic consequences for many of the dogs.

The Chronicle analyzes two of SF’s main animal shelters, the city department SF Animal Care and Control (SF ACC) and the privately funded San Francisco SPCA, which brings us the annual puppies and kittens in the Macy’s windows every holiday season. The SF SPCA often takes dogs from SF ACC for the SF SPCA’s much nicer shelter accommodations, but they're taking fewer these days.

“Historically, the SPCA has taken as many as 600 dogs from us, which helped us save more dogs,” SF ACC executive director Virginia Donohue told the Chronicle. “Unfortunately, for the last few years it has been fewer than 200 dogs, so we have looked further afield to find homes. As a city, we need more adoptions and less breeding to make sure that all of our dogs have families to love them.”

The SF SPCA has a bigger budget, and has the luxury of taking only dogs and cats. But the SF ACC takes in all manner of animals, and their resources have grown too thin to provide adequate medical care for the increasing number of dogs they’re tasked with.    

As the Chronicle notes, the SF ACC’s “live release rate” (dogs who they find a home, and do not have to put down) dropped from 91% to 88% in 2024. That’s the lowest rate in 12 years, and represents euthanized 257 dogs. They expect an even lower live release rate this year.

The SF SPCA, for their part, also takes in very large numbers of dogs from outside San Francisco, particularly the Central Valley. This has led to some finger-pointing that they’re allowing SF dogs to perish in the trade-off of saving dogs from elsewhere in the state.

“They’re so focused on this Central Valley expansion that they’ve forgotten that they’re the San Francisco SPCA,” former SF SPCA animal hospital co-director Chelsea Capaccio told the Chronicle. (She left the organization in October.)

But this isn’t anything nefarious, they are saving the lives of dogs, without prioritizing what geographical region the dog is from. “We’ve seen a slip in the live release rate,” SF SPCA CEO Jennifer Scarlett said to the Chronicle. “What’s happening in the Central Valley is even harder. We’re finding buckets of puppies and kittens in orchards.”

There are no easy solutions to this given the circumstances, but there are a few “right things to do.” Both shelters urge people to “adopt and not shop” in the puppy-mill era. And if it breaks your heart that more dogs are being euthanized, you can personally help reverse that trend my making a donation to the Friends of SF Animal Care and Control, which can help keep more dogs alive for longer.

Related: SPCA Now Teeming With Dogs, Adoption Fees Waived In SF for All of June [SFist]

Image: @SFACC via Twitter