More than 200 dogs and cats from Austin Pets Alive were placed in foster homes ahead of the winter freeze, making the shelter the emptiest it's been since its opening, APA staff said.
Luis Sanchez, APA’s head of public relations, said APA set out on Tuesday to place 75 pets in foster homes before the storm. That would ensure every remaining animal could stay indoors while temperatures dipped below freezing for more than 50 hours.
Sanchez said at first, that goal felt “crazy,” but after just one day of outreach, 65 animals were in foster homes.
“The wait times were around two to three hours, just because we had so many people at the shelter at one time,” he said. “We had to turn off the waitlist and say, ‘We're at capacity. We have more people than dogs available.’”
Jamie Gomez, a student at Texas State University, drove from San Marcos to APA’s shelter on Cesar Chavez last week after seeing a post about the need for foster homes on TikTok. After a five-hour wait, there were only a handful of dogs left. Gomez was matched with a large “pound puppy surprise” — APA’s friendly euphemism for a mutt. His name was Nico.
“I just wanted to do something to help, and I know it’s not much, but it’s something,” Gomez said. “And I love him so bad.”
Allison Swearingen, the dog placement senior program manager at Austin Pets Alive, helped match hundreds of dogs with foster pet parents in the days before the storm. She said usually the shelter has around 150 dogs on site. As of Tuesday, there were only 18.
"We’ve literally never had this few dogs on site before," she said. "The entire city showed up basically to help dogs that aren’t even their dogs."
Eventually, Swearingen had to direct interested foster parents to other local shelters. They, too, saw an increase in volunteers.
Sarah Hammel, the director of communications at Austin Humane Society, said the organization saw a “huge uptick” in people interested in fostering. Elizabeth Ferrer, the marketing program manager at the Austin Animal Shelter, said there were 66 fosters and nine adoptions at the shelter on Friday and Saturday before the storm.
“We had to turn folks away as we couldn’t process the high number of foster volunteers in time,” Ferrer said.
Sanchez said if no one had shown up, the dogs in outdoor kennels at APA would still have been safe — APA staff will house dogs in their offices if need be — but far less comfortable than staying in a foster home. The large number of fosters also freed up space for APA to accept pets that were at risk of being euthanized from shelters in San Marcos and Bastrop, as well as stray animals that were found in the cold.
Of the 203 dogs at APA that were placed in foster homes over the weekend, 40 have now been adopted and 25 have extended their stay until next week.
But Swearingen said APA will quickly fill up with new pets, and they will likely have to welcome back many of the dogs and cats that were fostered over the weekend.
That includes Nico. Being a busy college student with four roommates, Gomez said she couldn’t commit to fostering him long-term. But if another storm hits and APA urgently needs fosters, she said she’ll come back for him.
“He loved being on my bed; he really liked to cuddle when he was in the mood for it. He really got attached to me for sure,” she said. “He was just a really, really good dog.”
