Bright and early on Wednesday morning, Savannah Marino Marino and Candace Sutton, both behavior and care technicians, began bringing animals out of kennels.

The kennels are one of Denver Animal Shelter’s most unique resources.

They’re open overnight. For owners who can no longer care for their pets or for good Samaritans who find lost animals, the kennels are open after hours, and pets can be surrendered free of charge, simply by filling out a form.

Marino and Sutton never know what an animal would be like before they open the kennel door.

Oftentimes, they are scared, hungry and tired. 

Marino brought out an older German Shepard first. She’s shy but well behaved, and the two weighed and scanned her for a microchip.

Later in the day, the dog’s owner appeared to reclaim her, saying she ran away when she heard fireworks going off. A neighbor found her and brought her in overnight. Other animals are left with much less information. 

At one point during this summer, as many two dozen animals had been surrendered at the shelter in just one night.

It’s an alarming trend that seems to be unique to Denver and Colorado.

The Denver Animal Shelter (DAS) has seen record numbers of animals coming through its doors in recent years. Since the pandemic, its intake numbers steadily climbed, according to Denver Animal Protection Data.

In 2024, DAS took in 9,861 animals, a 95.7% percent increase from 5,037 in 2020.

Owner surrenders are also steadily rising, making up a large percentage of the animals coming in, besides strays.

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Last year, 25.76% of the total animals that came in were surrendered by their owners.

And this year, the shelter has received 4,408 animals so far, with 29.4% of those being surrendered.

For comparison, in 2020, only around 15% of the shelter intake that year was made up of owner-surrendered pets. That year was the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The staff at the shelter attributed the increase to a variety of factors, including a rise in cost of living, over-breeding, lack of social training during COVID-19, and nearby shelters beginning to charge animal surrender fees.

Metro Denver bucks national trend in animal surrenders

Liana Moss, a research associate at the Institute for Human-Animal Connection at the University of Denver who studies animal sheltering issues, said this spike in the metro Denver area isn’t part of a national trend.

“Their analysis tells us that national trends in intake, including owner surrender and relinquishment, are actually holding steady, including from pre-pandemic levels,” Moss said, citing data from the Shelter Animals Count that she has recently observed.  

“That raises the question: What’s happening in Denver and broader in Colorado that’s causing this deviation from what we’re seeing in national trends?”

She, too, attributed the complex issue to a variety of factors, including little access to affordable pet friendly housing and veterinary care.

“Particular to Colorado right now is that we’ve seen some shelters and rescues transition to restricted intake of animals,” she said.

As an open admission shelter, Denver Animal Shelter accepts every animal that comes to them. The shelter offers free spay and neuter services, low-cost vaccine clinics, adoption specials, partnerships with multiple organizations to provide food and pet supplies, and even temporary housing for pets with owners in crisis.

Melanie Sobel, the director at Denver Animal Shelter, said that because some other shelters are switching their intake model, more animals are being redirected to them.

“We’re like the true safety net,” she said.

Animals dropped anonymously overnight

Sobel told The Denver Gazette that, this summer, staffers have seen cases when up to 26 animals were surrendered in one night.

“We don’t want to have any barrier for somebody that needs help relinquishing their pet,” Sobel said.

Marino, whose job includes taking those surrendered animals out of the kennels first thing in the morning, examine them, give them their shots and impound them.

And the busiest season is approaching.

Typically, the Fourth of July is one of the “most hectic” days for the staff, as fireworks noise drives a lot of dogs away from their owners.

To deal with the increase, Sobel said the focus is to reduce the length of stay in the shelter for each animal. Thanks to a growing volunteer force and some private donations, Denver Animal Shelter has been able to handle the influx and even increase its adoption numbers, despite tight funding.

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“I’m working with my higher ups to try to figure out how we are going to maintain services,” said Sobel. “One thing that I think that we really need to start doing is working more on donations and getting private money.”

Sobel is hopeful the shelter can physically increase capacity, but she is unsure if funds will allow it.

According to Tammy Vigil a Department of Public Health and Environment Marketing and Communications Specialist, Denver’s animal protection officers are also at reduced capacity. Due to staffing shortages, officers will temporarily stop picking up stray dogs people have found.

However, Vigil said, officers will continue to do all other facets of their job, including investigating animal abuse and neglect.

Marino and Sutton have lots of kittens to get through in the summer. In one kennel, a litter of six is climbing all over each other.

Each kitten gets weighed and vaccinated and will be fostered out, as they are currently too young to be adopted.

Both Marino and Sutton have been at the shelter for years. While the warm months are always busy, they said there isn’t much of an “off season” anymore.

“We don’t have the time to take on extra projects like we used to,” Marino said.

To maintain operations despite short staff, Denver Animal Shelter employees are being cross-trained in different tasks around the shelter.

Marino said it’s always hard seeing people give up pets they can no longer take care of, but part of her role is trying to get those animals back in loving homes.

“That’s why it feels so good when we see animals that we have the time to work with.”