| Shelter Outcomes by Year | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Intake, Adoptions, and Deaths | ||||
| year | Total Intake | Total Adoptions | Total Deaths | |
| 2015 | 173,429 | 106,388 | 2,393 | |
| 2016 | 171,630 | 104,936 | 2,093 | |
| 2017 | 167,485 | 103,969 | 1,991 | |
| 2018 | 184,293 | 115,019 | 2,323 | |
| 2019 | 179,694 | 118,446 | 2,317 | |
| 2020 | 165,755 | 117,655 | 1,808 | |
| 2021 | 167,375 | 115,980 | 1,878 | |
| 2022 | 182,873 | 124,924 | 2,052 | |
| 2023 | 172,987 | 114,964 | 2,056 | |
| 2024 | 175,893 | 113,917 | 1,891 | |
| Total | — | 1,741,414 | 1,136,198 | 20,802 |
Colorado Shelter Trends: Multi-Year Data Analysis
About the Project
Every year, hundreds of animal shelters and rescues across Colorado open their doors to thousands of pets in need. Behind each of these numbers lies a story of compassion, survival, and the ongoing effort to create a future where every healthy and treatable animal has the chance to live. No Kill Colorado stands at the heart of this mission.
As a nonprofit animal welfare advocacy organization, No Kill Colorado is dedicated to driving systemic change through advocacy, education, and data-driven reform. Rather than operating as a shelter, it works to transform how the entire shelter system performs helping communities, policymakers, and organizations adopt humane, lifesaving practices inspired by the No Kill Equation.
To strengthen this mission, the organization launched the Data for Paws project an initiative designed to turn raw shelter data from 2016 to 2024 into meaningful insights. This project transforms data into visual stories that shed light on shelter performance, highlight progress, and reveal opportunities for further improvement.
Through this analysis, No Kill Colorado aims to:
Communicate key trends and metrics that influence animal welfare outcomes.
Increase the organization’s visibility as a leader in data-driven advocacy.
Equip policymakers, journalists, and the public with transparent, actionable information.
Summary Statistics
- Total intakes, adoptions, and outcomes by year
1. Transfers vs. Negative Outcomes in Colorado Shelters
This analysis compares the number of pets transferred into Colorado shelters from other states to the number of pets who do not leave shelters alive (euthanasia, died, or missing).
Key questions explored:
Are transfers outpacing local lifesaving capacity?
Do increases in transfers correlate with increases in negative outcomes?
Are Colorado shelters absorbing regional transfers without sacrificing local pets?
By visualizing both absolute counts and percentages of total intake over time, we can better understand trends, system capacity, and the impact of transfers on shelter outcomes.
Findings & Interpretation
The relationship between out-of-state transfers and negative outcomes in Colorado shelters appears weak, as indicated by the low correlation coefficient (r = 0.156). This suggests that higher numbers of transfers are not strongly associated with an increase in euthanasia, deaths, or missing animals. In other words, the data does not show that transfers directly drive negative outcomes.
Looking at the trend over time, transfers steadily increased from 2015 through 2020, reaching their peak in 2020, before showing a sharp decline between 2020 and 2024. In contrast, negative outcomes declined consistently from 2015 to 2020, suggesting that shelters were able to absorb rising transfer volumes without compromising lifesaving performance. However, after 2020, negative outcomes began to rise again, even as transfers decreased.
This inverse pattern implies that recent increases in negative outcomes are unlikely to be driven by incoming transfers. Instead, they may reflect other pressures on the shelter system after 2020, such as reduced staffing, funding constraints, or pandemic-related operational challenges.
Overall, the data suggests that Colorado shelters have historically maintained sufficient capacity to handle transfers from other states without increasing deaths. The recent uptick in negative outcomes appears more linked to systemic or contextual factors rather than transfer volume.
2. Adoption Trends Over Time
Adoption represents the single largest pathway out of shelters for animals, making it the cornerstone of successful shelter operations. This section examines whether Colorado’s adoption programs are keeping pace with intake growth, and identifies periods where external factors—economic conditions, public health crises, or targeted campaigns—may have influenced adoption rates.
Key questions explored:
- Are adoption numbers growing, declining, or remaining stable over time?
- Is adoption growth keeping pace with increases in shelter intake?
- What external factors correlate with spikes or drops in adoption rates?
- Are there opportunities to strengthen adoption programs based on historical patterns?
By analyzing both absolute adoption numbers and adoption rates (as a percentage of total intake), we can assess system health and identify periods requiring targeted intervention through marketing campaigns, fee-waived events, or expanded foster networks.
Findings & Interpretation
a) Divergence Between Volume and Efficiency
From 2017 to 2022, raw adoptions increased steadily from 104,000 to 125,000, a 20% rise. However, adoption efficiency (% of intake) tells a different story: rising from 62% (2015–2018) to 70% in 2020, then declining to 65% in 2024.
Interpretation: While shelters adopted more animals in absolute terms, they became less efficient at converting intakes into adoptions after 2020. This divergence highlights that high adoption volume alone does not guarantee system effectiveness.
b) The 2020 Adoption Spike
The 2020 peak of 70% adoption rate coincides with the COVID-19 pandemic:
- Increased time at home drove unprecedented demand for pets.
- Adoption rates spiked despite moderate raw intake (~118,000).
- This spike appears temporary; efficiency declined after 2020 once adoption demand normalized.
Critical consideration: Shelters that expanded capacity or staffing based on 2020 performance may have struggled when adoption demand returned to baseline.
c) 2022: High Volume, Falling Efficiency
2022 shows the highest raw adoptions ever (125,000) but a decline in adoption rate to 68.5%:
- Intake grew faster than adoptions, likely due to post-pandemic pet surrenders or economic pressures.
- The system successfully processed record adoption volume but couldn’t keep pace with intake growth, indicating underlying capacity limitations.
d) 2023–2024: Signs of Strain
The most recent years show troubling trends:
- Raw adoptions dropped 8% from the 2022 peak (125,000 → 114,000).
- Adoption rate fell to 65%, returning to pre-pandemic levels.
Interpretation:
- Possible demand-side contraction: economic headwinds, housing market pressures, or “adopter fatigue.”
- Potential supply-side challenges: longer stays, less appealing animal profiles.
- The system is handling similar or higher intake volumes but with reduced efficiency, highlighting capacity and operational strain.
3. Return-to-Owner (RTO) Rates
Return-to-Owner (RTO) rates represent the percentage of stray animals successfully reunited with their owners after entering the shelter system. These rates are a critical measure of how well identification, lost-and-found systems, and community outreach efforts are working to reconnect pets with their families.
Findings & Interpretation
Return-to-Owner (RTO) rates represent the percentage of stray animals successfully reunited with their owners after entering the shelter system. These rates are a critical measure of how well identification, lost-and-found systems, and community outreach efforts are working to reconnect pets with their families.
The analysis compares RTO trends for dogs and cats from 2015 to 2024.
Dogs consistently have much higher RTO rates than cats. Over the past decade, approximately 60–70% of stray dogs were returned to their owners each year, while only 10–15% of stray cats were reunited. The RTO Gap chart illustrates dogs outperforming cats by roughly 50–60 percentage points each year.
Between 2015 and 2019, dog RTO rates trended slightly upward, suggesting that identification and reunification initiatives such as microchipping and lost-and-found platforms were gaining traction. However, from 2020 onward, rates for dogs declined gradually, likely reflecting pandemic-related disruptions, including reduced shelter hours and slower reclaim processes.
For cats, the trend remained largely flat, indicating limited progress despite possible increases in microchipping or public awareness. Small upticks in certain years (e.g., 2018–2019) could reflect localized microchipping drives or education campaigns, though these effects appear temporary or limited in scope. This plateau highlights a persistent systemic challenge in feline reunification, possibly linked to lower microchip use, outdoor-living norms, and perceptions that stray cats are independent rather than lost.
Overall, the data suggests that current interventions have effectively supported dog-owner reunifications but have not closed the gap for cats. Future efforts should focus on targeted cat identification programs, community outreach, and behavioral insights to improve feline RTO outcomes.
4. Intake Categories & Shifts Over Time
Findings & Interpretation
1. Stray Intake Dominates But Shows Vulnerability
The most striking feature of the intake composition chart is that stray animals consistently represent the largest single category, comprising approximately 35-40% of total intake throughout the period. However, this proportion shows a concerning decline around 2020, dropping to roughly 30% before recovering. This dip coincides with the COVID-19 pandemic period, which raises important questions about whether this reflects actual changes in stray populations or shifts in animal control operations and public reporting during lockdowns.
The persistence of high stray intake suggests that despite years of data collection, fundamental issues remain unaddressed: inadequate spay/neuter programs, insufficient lost-pet recovery infrastructure, and potentially ineffective owner identification systems. The fact that this proportion hasn’t materially decreased over nearly a decade indicates that community-level interventions have not achieved meaningful impact on preventing animals from entering the shelter system as strays.
2. Owner Relinquishments: A Story of Crisis and Volatility
The owner relinquishment data reveals a serious pattern. The dramatic spike in 2018 (reaching approximately 47,000 animals) followed by a drop to just 37,500 in 2020—a decline of roughly 20%—and then an unprecedented surge to nearly 49,000 by 2023 suggests that pet ownership stability is highly susceptible to external economic and social pressures.
Critical interpretation of the 2020 drop requires skepticism. While this decrease might initially appear positive, it likely reflects pandemic-related factors rather than genuine improvement in pet retention. Shelters faced capacity constraints, reduced operating hours, and barriers to intake during COVID-19. The subsequent sharp rebound to record highs by 2022-2023 suggests that the 2020 drop masked accumulating pressures rather than indicating successful intervention. This pattern strongly implies that financial hardship, housing instability, and lack of accessible support services continue to force owners to surrender pets at alarming rates.
The fact that relinquishments have now exceeded pre-pandemic levels is particularly concerning. It suggests that economic pressures from inflation, housing costs, and veterinary expenses—which have risen dramatically in recent years—are overwhelming pet owners’ capacity to maintain their animals.
3. Transfer Dynamics Reveal System Dependencies
Out-of-state transfers maintain a relatively stable 15-20% share of intake throughout the period, while in-state transfers comprise roughly 8-10%. This pattern reveals two critical insights:
First, Colorado shelters appear dependent on a transfer system to manage capacity, potentially masking local intake pressures. The consistency of out-of-state transfers suggests this is not an emergency measure but rather a structural feature of the system. This raises questions about whether Colorado is adequately addressing its own animal welfare challenges or simply redistributing animals geographically.
Second, the relatively small proportion of in-state transfers compared to out-of-state transfers suggests limited collaboration within Colorado’s shelter network. This fragmentation may represent a missed opportunity for more efficient resource sharing and capacity management within the state.
| Average Yearly Change in Intake by Category | |
|---|---|
| Intake Category | Average Yearly Change (%) |
| Other | 4.00% |
| In_State_Transfers | 3.00% |
| Owner_Relinquished | 1.00% |
| Stray | 0.00% |
| Out_of_State_Transfers | −1.00% |