The Truth about Pandemic Puppies.

The unbearable loneliness caused by covid 19 drove many to selfishly adopt dogs they are incapable of attending to after their lives pick back up again, however some choose to ignore the truth. In 2020, the beginning of Covid-19, the pet food industry falsely reported that COVID-19 did not cause a spike in the numbers of pets adopted. News reports say that the population in shelters fell by 20,000 and the foster population grew by 5,000. However, in an article written by Matthew Solois, The director of veterinary economics, called “The COVID-19 pet adoption boom: Did it really happen?” He claims the pet food industry said these numbers have remained relatively the same the past couple of years and have continued to stay the same two years into the pandemic. This false information is poorly backed up by statistics that show a different outcome. These statistics show a steady decline and incline pattern of dog adoptions since 2016. He then states that  According to shelters across the nation 2020 had the lowest adoption rate in 5 years. But as seen in the statistics provided by Solois the pattern clearly tells us that there were not as many animals to adopt because of a large spike in adoption rates  the years before.

 Due to Solois’ faulty bar graph statistics he attempts to argue that there were 32% fewer adoptions and fosters in the beginning of covid, Which is true. This is because fewer people gave up their pets, in the beginning of the pandemicWhy would there be a change in the beginning of covid, when nothing has been extremely affected yet. All major adoptions happened after the effects of covid settled in.

As we all know all jobs were affected during covid and that creates a large chain reaction. Solois informs us that right before this time, programs were doing good with spaying and neutering to keep breeding down, however what once they were no longer keeping up with that because of Covid-19, the dog population skyrocketed. Breeders also play a big role in this because they have been the main reason for reproducing. They will never spay or neuter because that is their job and this was one of the few jobs that weren’t drastically affected by covid. Animal control teams were less active just like other jobs, meaning they were leaving all these animals on the streets where they would mate. It’s not that there weren’t dogs to adopt, it’s that they weren’t being counted for. Rescue teams who rely on purely donations, were stuck dealing with an overwhelming amount of dogs because of Animal control not being able to work.  The physical process of adopting dogs became limited to virtual meetings or fewer visitors in the shelter at a time.  This however limits how thorough home checks can be making the process of adopting that much easier. Fewer people will get denied from adoption when background checks are less intense. When it’s this easy to get a dog, not the population that is not fit to care for an animal is able to get one and these poor dogs ended up in the wrong hands and would soon see the shelter again. 

Solois admits later in his lousy argument that “ some shelters may have observed individual adoption numbers increase and veterinary practices did see an uptick in visits from new pet owners in 2020.” He then completely discredits that information by saying “on a national level, there doesn’t appear to have been a dramatic increase in pet adoptions.” What Solois is not realizing here is that in order to find a nationwide average you have to take into account all the low dog population areas, like major cities. This will lower the statistics tremendously leading to false reports made by ignorant people. There is no reason to take nationwide data when the main focus should be the shelters and communities that are struggling. 

Work Cited

Matthew Salois, PhD, and PhD Gail Golab DVM. “The Covid-19 Pet Adoption Boom: Did It Really Happen?” DVM 360, DVM 360, 23 Sept. 2021, https://www.dvm360.com/view/the-covid-19-pet-adoption-boom-did-it-really-happen-