American shelters killed 690,000 dogs and cats last year—up 19 percent from 2022 and the highest number in the last five years. In Michigan, too, “we are seeing an increase in euthanasia,” says HSHV CEO Tanya Hilgendorf—9,748 in 2022, the most recent year for which the Michigan Department of Agriculture has data.
Mark Kari and Ana Kornblum-Laudi with their current foster dog, Aspen. “You intellectually understand that shelters, once they reach capacity, can’t just take on dogs indefinitely,” Kornblum-Laudi says. “But I didn’t really emotionally appreciate that until I got involved with HSHV.” | Photo: Mark Bialek
Some overflowing shelters are being forced to drop their no-kill status, “The industry definition of being a no-kill shelter means that you adopt out all healthy and treatable animals,” explains Hilgendorf. But “a lot of shelters are now having to put down even healthy animals because of how overwhelmed they are.”
No healthy animals are euthanized here. “We only put down the dying and the dangerous,” Hilgendorf reports proudly. “The benchmark for being a no-kill shelter is saving at least ninety percent. Here the save rate is roughly about ninety-seven percent.” And Hilgendorf has no plans to change that policy: “You’d have to euthanize me first!”
The shelter on Cherry Hill Rd. remains no-kill despite taking in more than 6,500 domestic and 1,000 wild animals last year—in a building that can house only 400 at a time. “We have a pretty fast adoption rate,” the CEO explains. “The average time an animal might be here is about two weeks. Puppies and kittens move in days; adult animals tend to take a little longer.”
Lately, though, the average length of stay has gone up “twenty or thirty percent for dogs [and] the longer an animal sits here, the more likely that animal is to get sick, to be stressed, and to have behavioral issues,” Hilgendorf says. “That creates more challenges on the staff [and] increases the veterinary costs.”
The shelter was rebuilt to triple its size in 2009, but that can’t be done again. “We’re landlocked [by the] U of M,” Hilgendorf says, “and they don’t sell property.” Fortunately, HSHV has a cushion: a group of avid volunteers who care for animals in their own homes.
“Foster care is a way that we can expand space without having to build all this infrastructure,” Hilgendorf explains. In an email, she reports that HSHV fosterers took in 1,770 animals last year. “In January 2024, 230 were still in our care from the previous month,” she emails, and another “400 entered the shelter that month. 357 were adopted or returned home.”
“A lot of the animals that go to foster care are babies,” she writes. “It’s not healthy or safe to be in a shelter. You need that family home environment and 24-hour care.” And “a lot of dogs don’t do well in the shelter. It’s too stressful … they tend to develop behavior problems, and then it’s harder to adopt [them] out. So we always need more foster homes for adult dogs.”
That’s where folks like Mark Kari and Ana Kornblum-Laudi come in. The couple both grew up with dogs, but because his current job as an air ambulance charter pilot keeps him away from home two weeks at a time, he says, “it would preclude being able to own a dog.” They’re able to make fostering work because “HSHV has been very flexible” to accommodate their schedules.
Kari says they decided to foster after spending time with the dogs at the shelter. “We’ll both go out there and walk the dogs sometimes in our free time, but eventually you start falling in love with some of them, and you see the need of where the dogs just aren’t able to relax or decompress in the shelter setting and show off their true personality.”
The first dog they took in “was completely shut down in the shelter,” he continues. “They actually couldn’t take him out of the kennel without him going into seizures. But within three days of living in a home environment he was running around outside and got adopted out pretty quickly after that.”
The couple have been fostering for a year and are on their eighth dog: a pit bull mix named Aspen who came to them in the first week of January. “She was a year and eight months and [had] been in the shelter for about four months,” says Kornblum-Laudi. “The family [that surrendered her] said they didn’t have time to take care of her.”
Kornblum-Laudi says their relationship with Aspen “is mutually loving. We adore her. We think she’s the best dog on the planet.” That makes parting ways the hardest part of fostering: “I found it really bittersweet, emotionally difficult.”
“It’s a hard goodbye,” Kari agrees. “And then we’ll take a few days or a week or so and then go take a look at who’s out and who’s available and eventually end up with another one.”
“You intellectually understand that shelters, once they reach capacity, can’t just take on dogs indefinitely,” Kornblum-Laudi adds. “But I didn’t really emotionally appreciate that until I got involved with HSHV.”
“Fosters are critical to our success as a no-kill shelter,” sums up Hilgendorf in an email. And she has one more request.
“Please, please, please remind people to microchip their pets and put tags on them. Animals can’t tell us their address or their mom’s name. Identification is their ticket home!”
