Since the coronavirus pandemic hit the D.C. area and Tim Young started working entirely from his apartment, the Adams Morgan resident has applied to foster a dog at three different local rescues. So far, he’s had no luck.

“I thought, ‘any day they’ll be reaching out to me about a specific animal,'” he says. “I said I would foster any kind of dog. I thought maybe that would help speed up the process.”

But Young says the number of other available foster homes for animals has meant that he’s still on standby—and at this point, he’s getting desperate.

“I’m all alone in the apartment, and it’s always been my dream to have a dog,” he says. His roommate, with whom he usually shares a 2-bedroom apartment, left for California before the pandemic hit, and ended up staying rather than risk traveling back.

“I would say I peaked early. I was living my best life [alone in the apartment] for a week or two,” Young says. “And now I like to joke that I’m having a Zoom party with the voices in my head.”

As the pandemic wears on, and more and more people are seeking to ease the loneliness of their quarantines and social distancing periods by adopting or fostering furry creatures, local animal shelters and rescue operations are actually running out of animals.

“We certainly don’t have enough animals for every foster home who wants one,” says Samantha Miller, a spokesperson for the D.C. Humane Rescue Alliance, one of the largest animal rescue operations in the city. “And those who we do send to foster are often getting adopted within a couple of days.”

Between March 15 and April 16 of this year, 1,553 people in the area signed up with the Humane Rescue Alliance to foster animals. In the same period last year, 68 people signed up, the organization says. (That’s more than 2,000 percent increase, for those counting.)

Adoptions have been much more comparable to the Humane Rescue Alliance’s normal numbers. But Lucky Dog Animal Rescue in D.C. tells DCist it has been adopting out animals at an unprecedented rate since the pandemic began. Over the last month—from March 16 to April 14—the rescue has adopted out four times as many dogs and cats as the average before the coronavirus.

“Prior to COVID-19, we would consider 40-50 adoptions a good week,” Mirah Horowitz, the founder and executive director of Lucky Dog Rescue, said in a statement. “In each of the last three weeks, we’ve adopted out 100 animals. The number of families seeking the comfort of pets is incredible.”

Homeward Trails Animal Rescue, too, has seen a huge bump, executive director Sue Bell tells DCist via email. Foster applications are up by 60 to 70 percent, adoptions are up by 40 percent, and animals are moving out of the rescue’s care far more quickly as they get adopted out, she says. “We are having trouble keeping up with the number of applications we’re getting,” Bell adds.

For those who are successful adopting pets (especially puppies) during social distancing, experts say it’s important to try to maintain a semblance of the same schedules they’ll have when their owners eventually go back to work. Otherwise, pets can suffer from loneliness and stress when they’re later left at home for long periods.

“Maybe if you’re working from home, keep them in their crate while you work from your desk. Get them used to being alone for longer and longer periods of time,” Ashley Valm, the director of adoptions at the Humane Rescue Alliance, told DCist last month.

At City Dog Rescue in D.C., both fosters and adoptions have increased “exponentially” since the start of the pandemic, executive director Patricia Kennedy tells DCist. Cat adoptions have increased by 51 percent compared to the same time last year, dog adoptions by 34 percent, and overall adoptions by 45 percent, Kennedy says. The numbers “would likely be much higher if we were able to bring in more animals,” she says.

The rescue hasn’t been able to intake enough animals to meet demand, especially since three of the organization’s rural partner shelters (in North Carolina and Virginia) closed to new animals when the pandemic began.

“The number of applications has increased exponentially and we simply aren’t able to intake enough animals with the three closed county shelters not taking stray animals and what appears to be a decrease in owner surrenders during this time,” she says over email. “However, we are very concerned about the influx of animals that will occur when shelters reopen and we will need all of these eager fosters and adopters available at that time to prevent needless euthanasia at these rural shelters.”

Like the other shelters and animal rescues in the city, City Dog Rescue has had to completely change much of its adoption procedure to keep its workers, foster volunteers, and adoptive families safe. They’re currently doing virtual home-visits and meet-and-greets for families, Kennedy says, and they’ve moved their intake operations to the Historic Congressional Cemetery in Hill East, which offered them the large space to allow for social distancing between volunteers.

“Our usual office and intake space is in a small inside room where it would have been impossible to practice social distancing,” Kennedy says.

Other local shelters had a harder time making the transition, which meant that their adoptions actually had to slow down—not because of reduced demand, but because they didn’t have processes in place for virtual adoptions. The Fairfax County animal shelter just launched its virtual adoption process last week, and seven animals were adopted out, a spokesperson tells DCist. This week, 25 pets have been adopted already.

As for Young, the unavailability of a foster dog—and the clear plethora of other people willing to foster animals in the area—convinced him to buy a dog from a Virginia breeder. He picks up the puppy in a few weeks.