Adoption & Pet Care

Animal Overpopulation

Pet overpopulation is a tragic problem. Each year, hundreds of animals in shelters must be euthanized because good homes could not be found for them.

Many people who breed their pets believe they aren't adding to the pet overpopulation problem if they find good homes for all their puppies or kittens. But consider this:

Finding a home

Suppose there are 10 families in your community that want puppies and can provide good homes for them, but there are 15 puppies that need good homes. When each of the 10 families takes a puppy, there will be five "leftover" puppies that have no future except humane euthanasia.

Then suppose you let your dog have a litter of five puppies . . . Puppies having puppies

There are now 20 puppies in the community that need good homes, but still only 10 good homes available. Even if you manage to place every one of your five puppies with one of the 10 available homes, there are now 10 leftover puppies, where before there were only five. You've created more animals, but you haven't created more homes. You've just taken some homes away from other puppies and kittens, dogs and cats. By allowing your pet to breed, you've increased the number of puppies that will have to be euthanized because no one wants them.

It all adds up

When people have babies, they usually have only one baby at a time. When dogs and cats have babies, they usually have more than one at a time!

By age five, a female dog and her female offspring can produce 192 puppies (assuming two females per litter and two litters per year). And this doesn't include all of the offspring produced by her male puppies.

Humans simply do not produce at these outrageous rates. Nor does every human born want a puppy. This adds up to a great deal of unwanted puppies and dogs in our community.

It's easy to produce 80 million cats

Just allow two cats and their surviving offspring to breed for 10 years. In that time, you'll produce 80,399,780 cats (this assumes two litters per year and 2.8 surviving kittens per litter).

First year: 12
Second year: 66
Third year: 382
Fourth year: 2,201
Fifth year: 12,680
Sixth year: 73,041
Seventh year: 420,715
Eighth year: 2,423,316
Ninth year: 13,968,290
10th year: 80,399,780

You can help stop these generations of suffering. Have your female spayed and your male neutered. Don't allow them to have litters and help put an end to pet overpopulation.