Pet ownership did increase during the lockdown - and then there was a surge of pets back into the animal shelters.
I have a friend that volunteers in several and said they were flooded with pets turned in right after the lockdown started to end.
Looks like many people rushed to get pets without realizing all the care and love they require.
That and animal food has gotten insanely expensive.
Maybe because they got the pets during the lockdown they didn’t realize that they couldn’t handle them, if dogs, once they were back to work.
Brandon did that, just another of his many accomplishments.
That is part of it. The other is many of those puppies/dogs adopted failed to get proper training at key development periods.
Now, two years on down the road, trainers call them pandemic puppies. High anxiety dogs because that was the environment they experienced early on. Lack of socialization, reactionary dogs, overprotective to dangerous levels. Many needing to be put on anxiety medication such that rehabilitation and training can take place. Dog trainers themselves are running on compassion fatigue for owners of such pets.
In closed pet care forums reading of experienced professional dog walkers struggling with these dogs on all sorts of levels.
These are the dogs often being surrendered. Many want to blame the owners, but it is a side-effect of the pandemic lock-downs.
The problem is while the dogs helped people cope, the human anxiety hurt the dog.
A co-worker advised getting cheap chicken and cooking it with rice. I buy big WM bags of rice and 10 lb. bags chicken legs. It’s comparable in price to store dog food and the dogs love it. A 10-gal pot of it lasts about 9 days for my 2 dogs. Costs less than $1/day.