Adopting a pet is a huge decision. Just like there are common times to adopt, there are also common times shelters see the most surrenders. Make sure you have read up on the pet you are considering adopting before jumping into the purchase, because they may end up back at the shelters during these busy times.

• Holidays

A common time to adopt is right before the holidays. A Christmas puppy under the tree looks nice but with the joy comes a lot of hard work and care. Before adopting for a gift make sure the person or the family is truly ready for the commitment of taking care of an animal. Shelters also see an increase in surrenders due to people not wanting the extra work of an animal while preparing for the holidays. Overtaken by the stress of decorating, buying gifts, cooking, hosting, etc. pets get lost in translation and are often seen as a burden.

There are also a lot of surrenders after Easter. Rabbits are the third most surrendered animal in the United States right behind dogs and cats. They are often purchased as "Easter Bunnies," or an easy first pet for children. The reality is that rabbits are just as much work as dogs and cats. Instead of doing the research, the commitment is found out after the fact and rabbits are often surrendered to shelters or are let go. The harsh truth is that, "domesticated rabbits could never fend for themselves outdoors since they have evolved to live indoors. Eventually they will die due to their inability to find shelter, food and water." If you are considering adopting a rabbit please do your research before hand!

• Summer Months

The summer months are a common time for shelters to get busy with surrenders for a number of reasons. The summer months are known as kitten season due to the abundance of newborn litters from free roaming cats. Often times these kittens are picked up and brought to shelters when the mother is off getting food, those kittens then end up in the system. If these kittens stay and grow up in the wild they will continue to produce kittens since they are not neutered or spayed. This continues to add to the overpopulation of cats in shelters.

Another reason summer months spike with surrenders is due to vacations. The lack of care for you animal when leaving the house for a weeks vacation ends up in a simple surrender instead of boarding, finding care, or taking your pet with you. It is a terrible solution to a simple problem.

Lastly, it is common to see pets escaping during the summer months, especially on July 4th and July 5th. Pets who end up in the shelters on their own can be from them being spooked by thunderstorms or fireworks, or can be from an escape from a backyard. There are a number of reasons pets can end up at shelters, but a lot of these animals are just left there - putting them back into the system.

• Other

There are always other factors to cause pet surrenders throughout the year, a common one over the past few years has been COVID-19. As the pandemic has started to settle down and people have started going back to work, "shelters have seen a surge in surrenders." People who made the spontaneous decision to get a pet during the pandemic due to them being lonely did not do the proper research before adopting. They are not realizing how much work pets are and how much of a commitment they are - causing them to back out and surrender. In fact COVID-19 has caused a sort of domino effect with shelters. There continue to be staffing shelters due to the lack of volunteers which leads to fewer intakes, fewer adoption events, wait lists, fewer fosters, longer adoption processes and more. Not to mention that animal shelters are having a hard time finding funding adding to the growing list of problems.