Holiday crunch hits Wyoming shelters hard as fosters dry up and surrenders climb

The original story by Melodie Edwards for Wyoming Public Radio.

It’s loud at Black Dog Animal Rescue in Cheyenne — dogs barking, people talking, the whole place buzzing — and foster manager Paige Russell is basically raising her voice just to be heard.

“We just had dogs come in from New Mexico yesterday,” Russell said. “So we took in a mom and some puppies and then a smaller chihuahua mix and then a little beagle mix.”

Black Dog, she added, is the biggest animal foster care program in Wyoming. And right now, it’s feeling the holiday squeeze.

Russell said the holidays are usually when foster homes get harder to find — not because people don’t care, but because life gets chaotic.

“During the holidays, people get busier, and fewer fosters are available,” she said. That means dogs who could be curled up on a couch end up sitting in kennels “for days on end,” when what they really need is “a warm home and a caring family.”

A lot of volunteers are traveling, hosting relatives, or dealing with full houses — and that can make bringing a foster dog home tricky.

“They might go around to visit other family members. They might leave their house and go on vacations, or they have people coming into their home,” Russell said. “It could range from they’re really great with animals to maybe they’re not so great with animals.”

On top of that, Russell said there’s a very real “shopping cart” effect with holiday fostering: people tend to pick smaller dogs first.

“They tend to look at smaller, more handleable dogs,” she said, adding that smaller dogs often get adopted faster.

Meanwhile, Black Dog is struggling to line up homes for several large dogs through early January.

Seasonal chaos isn’t the only driver. Russell said shelters across Wyoming are seeing more animals come in because people are under financial stress.

“Mostly, what animal shelters and rescues are going through right now is that we’re seeing a lot of animals come in and a lot of people struggling to keep their animals with them,” she said. Job loss, lack of resources, unexpected costs — it all adds up. “We try to bring grace to all of those situations.”

And it’s not just in Cheyenne. Russell said shelters statewide are trying to manage more pets than they have space, staff, or foster homes for — especially in rural areas where animal control or small shelters often serve as the main safety net.

Russell’s top ask is still foster homes — even short-term help can make a big difference. But she also pointed to other ways to step in.

One of the easiest: volunteer time.

“Being able to step up and become a foster is one of the most important things you can do,” she said. “But the second thing is just to volunteer… I know that they have programs where volunteers can come in and walk dogs.”

Even if you can’t bring an animal home, getting dogs out of their kennels for walks and human time matters — especially during the busiest weeks of the year.

Russell’s advice is simple: contact your local shelter, rescue, or animal control and ask what they need most right now — because chances are, they’re feeling the holiday crunch, too.