There is a national crisis at animal shelters across the country that are taking in more pets than are being adopted.

“If we can keep adoptions going, we would be OK,” Stacie Voss, animal welfare director at Farmington Regional Animal Shelter, told KOB. “But we are getting one adoption a day, two adoptions a day, when we need five adoptions a day to keep pace with what’s coming in.”

Best Friends, an animal welfare organization, reported 100,000 more pets in shelters across the county than in previous years, an increase that isn’t expected to slow anytime soon.

“This is a nationwide problem with shelters across the country,” Voss said. “We usually transfer animals out to other areas that have higher adoption rates and not as many animals, and we haven’t been able to do that because our transfer partners are full too.”

Animals are arriving at shelters earlier than in previous years. 

“Kitten season has started early this year,” Voss said. “We are already seeing a lot of pregnant and in-heat cats. We have our first mom and babies already coming in. We have some young kittens coming in and normally we don’t see that until another month or so.”

And who let the dogs out?

“March we usually see a huge spike in the number of dogs that come in because of the warm weather,” Voss said. “We are really facing some difficult decisions and some hard times if we can’t get some dogs adopted.”

Voss suggested the slow pace of adoptions might be related to the economy. 

“A lot of people are just not adopting larger adult dogs for some reason,” she said. “I’m not sure why, but those dogs are staying here longer and longer and taking up more space.”