When the animal shelter in Albuquerque gets too crowded, they know exactly who to call.
Kourtney O’Hair in the past nine months fostered 48 dogs. Sometimes she takes on a whole litter.
She said her passion started when she took in a puppy that was probably about four days old, she told KOAT. She and her family bottle-fed it, and that made up her mind.
“We’re like, well, we have to keep it. And then we just kept fostering all these little 3-day-old puppies. So we have them for a long time. We get attached, but it’s very fulfilling, very rewarding,” O’Hair said.
Animal shelters are seeing an overcrowding crisis nationwide, the Miami Herald reported . The Miami-Dade County Animal Services (MDAS) announced recently that it couldn’t accept animal intakes from June 22 until July 10 because it has to focus on the hundreds of animals already in their care.
Officials at the shelter said in a news release that since the COVID pandemic, there has been an overcrowding crisis at shelters all across the U.S. During the past two years, the MDAS has seen a big increase in the number of days animals stay in their care and had to close intake a few times in 2023.