Animal care technician Shelley Cook greeted the dogs by name Saturday as she walked through the kennels at the Bloomington Animal Shelter.
“Hi Drama,” Cook said to a brown bully-breed dog in one kennel. “She’s like, ‘I’m bored, can you take me to the pool!’”
Due to a rush of activity that day, Cook said she chose to work overtime through her lunch break, as did the other three animal care technicians on staff. In addition to routine animal care, staff juggle animal intake, foster appointments and trial adoptions during the shelter’s public weekend hours from 12-3 p.m.
Shelter Director Virgil Sauder said the number of animals coming in has strained the shelter’s finances. In a July Facebook post, the shelter said its dog kennels were over capacity and asked locals to adopt or foster.
The shelter is currently running a matching fundraiser for its medical fund, which goes toward emergency vet bills or medical treatments.
The shelter’s total intake has risen every year since it sharply dropped in 2020, reaching 3,328 in 2024, according to city data.
Cook started her animal care technician training before the lockdown, and she’s worked at the shelter for nearly six years. After the pandemic, the shelter instituted a waitlist for people looking to surrender their pets and cut its hours from 12-7 to 12-5 p.m. on weekdays.
“It’s a sense it’s been good, but in a sense it's been hard also,” Cook said. “It feels like things are busy all the time now.”
Sauder said the shelter is at manageable capacity, with about 160 animals in kennels and another 190 in foster homes. He said capacity isn’t an exact number and depends on the species, the maintenance level of the animals and staff availability.
Sauder said the shelter is seeing more community members struggle to care for their pets amid rising costs of living and limited housing.
“People are trying to figure out how to feed their kids, or, you know, clothe their children, and they have a pet and things have to give,” Sauder said. “And so that's how we end up with a lot of our animals.”
When these problems are temporary, pet owners can apply for help from the Monroe County Humane Association’s Crisis Housing Center, which provides boarding for two to four months, according to CHC Outreach Coordinator Liz Austen. The program is intended as a last resort to keep low-income Monroe County residents from permanently losing their animals.
Austen said most people who use the center’s services are facing eviction, medical crises, incarceration or domestic violence, or are spending time in rehab for drug addiction.
When Austen joined in 2023, the CHC only kept animals for two weeks, she said. Now the limit is two to four months, so pet owners have time to find housing, employment or go through rehab for drug use.
Austen said the CHC has been expanding its capacity since 2023, with the help of volunteers.
But the need for temporary pet housing is still outpacing the CHC’s capacity. Austen said she estimates that for every animal the center takes in, there are two to three it can’t.
The CHC also can’t house pets indefinitely, so when pet owners ask for help because their landlord instituted a no-pet policy or added pet fees the tenants can’t afford to pay, Austen said their best option is the shelter.
“People are finding it harder to make their ends meet, and so unfortunately, when those things change and people feel stressed in those areas, often animals are the ones that can suffer,” Sauder said.
