First it was toilet paper, hand sanitizer and now it’s dogs and cats that New York City is experiencing a shortage of due to the coronavirus outbreak.
It appears, as people are being forced to shelter in place they are looking for comfort and in the New York City area there’s been a run on pets of adopted and foster animals, per Bloomberg in a piece published Wednesday. (RELATED: REPORT: Coachella Potentially Rescheduled To October Due To Coronavirus Fears)
NYC has run out of dogs. The crisis and confinement and need for comfort is completely eliminating the available inventory of dogs in shelters https://t.co/N071lT82EK
— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) March 25, 2020
“For the moment we definitely don’t have any dogs left to match” with foster volunteers,” Anna Lai, the marketing director at Muddy Paws shared. “Which is a great problem to have.”(RELATED: Pearl Jam Postpones North American Tour Over Growing Coronavirus Concerns)
According to the report:
Muddy Paws Rescue and Best Friends Animal Society are reporting shelters they work with are either all out of or almost out of cats and dogs after a surge in applications of as much as 10-fold in the past two weeks.
And it’s not just NYC seeing experiencing a shortage, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said its Los Angeles shelters have seen a seventy percent increase in animals going into foster care amid the pandemic.
“We’re seeing people show up in droves to foster,” Julie Castle, chief executive officer of Best Friends explained.
Tom Drescher and his wife, Becky Nolin, of Washington, D.C., brought home a 10-year-old mixed breed named Goldie because they said the would “have the time” to help the pup get settled in.
“It occurred to us it would be a good time to adopt a dog because we’d have the time and bandwidth to help it settle in,” Drescher shared. “It’s been a blast for us so far — we’ve been thrilled to have her.”
Not surprisingly, as other areas of the stock market are experiencing declines, Chewy Inc, which is an online retailer of pet food and products, has seen its shares soar up seven percent this year. PetMed Express Inc., an animal pharmaceutical company, is also outperforming in the market.