ajcpets

Mark Jane has lived a little, has stopped a few of life's punches. Yet nothing prepared him to say goodbye to his little friends.

Inky, Trixi Ann, Jerri Li: the Chihuahuas pranced on stick-thin legs as he left them at the Etowah Valley Humane Society's animal shelter in Bartow County. Jane turned and left quickly. Fifty-two-year-old men don't like to cry in public.

Bob Andres / bandres@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Doc, a Jack Russell Terrier Wirehair eager to get out for a walk, jumps with excitement in his kennel at the Southern Hope Humane Society. His owners gave him up for adoption when their home was foreclosed.

Bob Andres / bandres@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Andy passes the time in the cat room at Southern Hope. He, too, was dropped off when times got tough for his family.

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"I lost my dad and my sisters," said Jane, a demolitions expert who helped construction companies level sites for development until he was laid off late last year .

Then he lost the dogs, too. "I tell you," he said, "nothing hurt like that."

Jane, like other Americans caught short in the country's housing woes, had lost his home to foreclosure. And so his dogs had lost theirs, too.

With the arrival of spring and a deepening recession, shelters already bulging with pets that have lost their humans and homes through foreclosure now have the added strain of new litters of puppies and kittens.

Euthanization figures at shelters in two of metro Atlanta's largest counties are proof they have reached their limit.

"This," said animal rescuer Stacey Hall, "is as bad as I've ever seen it."

Bad all over, too. A national organization that charts animal issues reports that across the country shelters have overflowing inventories. Adding to rescue societies' problems: the escalating price of gas continues to cut into their budgets.

This is not news to shelters in metro Atlanta, where the pets come singly, two at a time, in litters. They bark and whine when visitors' shadows flit past their chain-linked cages. They mewl and slide furry paws at passersby.

They break Hall's heart. She's president of Southern Hope Humane Society in Roswell, which accepts animals primarily from county-run shelters in Cobb, Bartow and Paulding counties. It has room for 30 animals, and it is full. Even without the foreclosure woes, she said, the shelter would be full.

She has no more room for dogs, puppies or anything in-between. "Kittens?" she asked. "You have to tie dollar bills around their necks to get rid of them."

And still the animals keep coming, said Hall, who noted that the society recently began taking back pets it had adopted out. "People just cannot afford to care for them anymore," said Hall, who has been rescuing animals for 17 years.

Or check with police Lt. Mary Lou Respess, who oversees the Gwinnett Animal Welfare and Enforcement Center. "I don't know if it's [foreclosures], or if it's just sorry people," she said, "but we have noticed an increase" in unwanted animals.

Through May of this year, the shelter put down 2,570 dogs and cats. Last year, during the same five-month period, it euthanized 1,720.

The numbers are comparable in Cobb County, which also operates a euthanization shelter. From January through May 2007, it killed 2,043 unwanted animals; for the same period this year, the number edged up to 2,369.

Shelters that don't kill feel the pinch, too. For example, the increase became so pronounced at Atlanta Animal Rescue Friends that it had to temporarily suspend accepting unwanted pets, said India Powell, AARF's vice president of communications. It won't take any more animals until Sept. 1, she said.

AARF, which relies on foster homes to care for animals, gets about 50 e-mails a week from people desperate to find a home for their pets, said Powell. One-third, she said, report they are moving into smaller homes where pets aren't welcome.

"We already had a bad problem," she said, "and this has just made it worse."

The problem is nationwide, said Stephanie Shain, who directs the outreach program for the Humane Society of the United States. The organization recently established a fund to help shelters look after animals who lost their homes in the foreclosure crunch. When it announced the fund in March, 70 shelters applied for aid. Eleven recently got the first grants, which range from $500 to $2,000 and help qualified shelters buy food and pay other costs. None in Georgia was a recipient.

The national society does not keep numbers that underscore the increase in demands placed on shelters, said Shain. It estimates that anywhere between 6 million to 8 million animals are in shelters across the country every year.

Now, with litters turning up at shelters, "We expect that number is increasing," she said.

Dorothy Wissler, director of the Etowah Valley shelter, offered the same assessment. The shelter, which does not euthanize, has 60 animals. Wissler said it's full.

Recently, it barely made room for three little dogs that didn't need much —Inky, Trixi Ann and Jerri Li.