About twice a month, Karyn Fragomeni makes a trip to the veterinarian's office. And she brings quite the entourage with her.
"I will take a whole van full," she said. "I have about 45 animals I'm taking to get spayed and neutered on Wednesday."
Those animals are either dogs currently in foster care, or cats in foster care or staying at the no-kill animal shelter run by Paws for Life. It’s a non-profit dedicated to housing stray pets and shelter animals at risk of being euthanized.
Fragomeni is the director of operations at Paws for Life. She said they currently have about 120 cats either in foster homes or staying at the organization's shelter in Heber City.
"In the wintertime we had about 40 to 60 cats and kittens in our care give or take, depending on the time," she said. "Now we are in the midst of kitten season."
And some of the cats she takes to the vet aren’t even counted in that number. The shelter also does catch, neuter, and release with feral cats. She said the population of strays has exploded since COVID.
"During the pandemic vets were not allowed to spay and neuter, because all of the PPE went to hospitals," she said. "They were allowed to only do emergency surgeries."
Fragomeni said the shelter does take in kittens from feral communities, who are then socialized and made ready for adoption. But they have to share shelter space and foster homes with other animals that were adopted during COVID but then surrendered to shelters.
"A lot of dogs have had difficulties with socializing with other animals or other people," she said. "We're seeing a lot of behavior issues where dogs are being surrendered, because they had been kept just in their homes and not meeting new people or new dogs. Also a lot of separation anxiety, because those dogs were used to people being home all the time."
The rising cost of living has also made it difficult for pet owners to keep their animals, Fragomeni said. And further adding to the shelter population has been the popularity of backyard breeding of certain doodle breeds. When those dogs don’t get homes, they go to the shelters, too.
"You can now see a lot of full-breed, purebreed dogs that you can find in shelters now, that you would not see in shelters and rescues in the past," she said.
Fragomeni said all of these issues have contributed to high intakes for shelters nationwide. But in Utah, the once-in-a-generation winter the state just experienced also put a damper on shelters’ abilities to find homes for those animals.
"Because who wants to take a new dog home when you have four feet of snow and no fence left in your backyard? So this winter really kind of slowed down quite a bit for foster opportunities and adoptions."
Now that the weather is better, adoptions are picking up again, Fragomeni said. And she hopes Wasatch County residents will look to shelters when they’re ready to welcome their next furry friend.
"There’s so many fantastic animals out there that have just found themselves in some dire situations, completely no fault of their own," she said. "There's some great animals in rescue."
Information on adopting, fostering or volunteering with Paws for Life can be found at pflu.org.
