(Radio Iowa) – The state’s animal shelters continue to be overcrowded. Brenda Iwen, of Noah’s Hope Animal Rescue in Sioux City, says they are overcrowded with dogs, and are not the only ones. “Right now the rescue world is in a crisis. Not only us but all the shelters are full, rescue groups, it doesn’t matter where you’re at Texas, Tennessee, Iowa everybody’s full and because of that dogs are getting dumped,” she says.

Iwen says dumping dogs makes the problem worse. “We have a trapping team and so when dogs are dumped we trap them and then we try to find them foster homes,” Iwen says.”The problem is our foster homes are full and the shelters are full so it’s a crisis right now and I don’t know what we can do to change it other than spay and neuter.” She says it appears people have stopped spying and neutering animals and that leads to animals with unwanted litters.

“Right now we have three litters of puppies. Unwanted and so they come in with mom and and now we’re trying to find homes and so nice dogs but again we just have so many,” she says. “But you just can’t when you get a call you can’t just say I’m sorry we’re fall. We can’t help you just got to figure out where we can fit them in at.” Iwen says their costs for the extra animals are going to top 100-thousand dollars. “And that’s just on vet bills, that’s not our fuel, insurance, that’s not anything. That’s just our vet bills,” Iwen
says. “Because once we bring a dog or a cat into our system they get the same care that our own personal animals get.”

All of Noah’s Hope rescuers are volunteers, and she says they have had good financial support from the
community.