Newest Shortage in New York: The City Is Running Out of Dogs to Foster

Of all the shortages created by the coronavirus pandemic -- the toilet paper and the hand sanitizer and the bottled water -- the oddest of them all has to be dogs. Oh, and cats too.

That’s right, in the New York city area, the epicenter of the disease, there is suddenly a run on pets. At least of the adopted or fostered kind. Muddy Paws Rescue and Best Friends Animal Society are reporting shelters they work with are either all out of or almost out of cats and dogs after a surge in applications of as much as 10-fold in the past two weeks.

Ordered to shelter in place at home, and both a little bored and a lot anxious, New Yorkers apparently see the four-legged friends as way to calm frayed nerves. “For the moment we definitely don’t have any dogs left to match” with foster volunteers, said Anna Lai, the marketing director at Muddy Paws. “Which is a great problem to have.”

It also helps explain why shares of Chewy Inc. are soaring right now even as the stock market overall crashes. It’s up 7% this year, as customers hunker down and order online. The spike in volume has pushed delivery times to between seven and 10 days for most customers, according to the company’s website.

“Chewy’s in-home delivery model mitigates the public health concern of consumers shopping at brick-and-mortar retailers,” RBC Capital Markets said in a report. Another plus: Pet food is mostly recession-proof.