We stand for a world where every dog has a good life, and dogs that are warehoused do not have a good life. “Warehousing” refers to the practice of rescues using boarding facilities to house dogs that may be harder to adopt. These rescues typically import thousands of dogs and puppies every year from outside Colorado and do not have enough foster homes for all of them. They then select the dogs deemed least adoptable and place them in boarding for an indefinite period. These dogs can spend months or even years in these boarding facilities where they receive little attention and enrichment and often spiral downward emotionally and physically to the point that they have no possibility of a quality life even outside of boarding and must be euthanized. All because the organizations that “rescued” them didn’t want them any more than the facility they got them from, but they did want some of the dogs and puppies that came with them. This is a practice called “puppy bundling” where an out-of-state facility will transfer dozens of dogs to a Colorado rescue provided they also accept certain adult dogs. The puppies go to Colorado foster homes and the adult dogs often go to boarding facilities, where some Colorado rescues spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, a fact supporters and donors are probably not even aware of.
Fast-forward to 2021. National Canine Advocacy Group, TABTO, and other animal advocates from all over Colorado came together to support HB 21-1160, which established requirements for animal enrichment in any state-licensed facility. This includes boarding facilities. In 2022, we participated in stakeholder meetings that specified in detail what is required to comply with the regulations coming out of HB 21-1160, which includes explicit enrichment plans for individual dogs that exhibit signs of stress and/or deterioration while in the care of the facility. We believe this legislative and regulatory work paved the way for rescues to re-examine their practices. The data shows a marked decline in the number of dogs in boarding facilities post-2021.
Sometimes we don’t get to see the results of advocacy work we and others do, but when it comes to the warehousing of dogs in Colorado, we’ve made an impact.
National Canine has the most comprehensive statistics database related to Colorado animal rescues and shelters and can provide custom reports for a minimal fee. Please get in touch with us at info@canineadvocacy.org to learn more.