A Comprehensive Analysis of Access to Veterinary Care in Animal Shelters Across the State
California's animal shelters face significant veterinary workforce challenges with multiple interconnected causes. Shelters face substantial compensation gaps with private practice, geographic disparities leave rural areas underserved, facility limitations prevent in-house surgical programs, and systemic workforce shortages affect the entire veterinary profession.
These challenges converge to strain shelter capacity, limit community service delivery, add significant stress to shelter workers and affect the welfare of hundreds of thousands of animals annually.
Solving these challenges likely requires substantial public and private investment: sign-on bonuses of up to $100,000, salary supplements of $25,000–$50,000 annually, and enhanced loan forgiveness. The stakes are profound: without adequate veterinary staffing, animals endure prolonged shelter stays, staff face unsustainable workloads, disease spreads more easily, and communities lose access to preventive services that address overpopulation at its source.
A comprehensive survey combined with qualitative focus group insights
In October 2025, The California Animal Welfare Association (CalAnimals) and The Veterinary Care Accessibility Project (VCAP) surveyed 103 California animal shelters to understand the veterinary staffing challenges affecting shelter medicine.
To provide qualitative depth to the quantitative findings, four focus groups were conducted in November–December 2025 with representatives from shelters stratified by annual intake size: small shelters (<500 animals/year), medium shelters (500–2,000/year), large shelters (2,000–5,000/year), and very large shelters (>5,000/year). A total of 27 shelter professionals participated across these sessions.
The 103 responding shelters represent California's diversity, serving animals from under 500 to over 25,000 annually. Collectively, these shelters serve 409,860 animals per year with operating budgets ranging from under $500,000 to $70 million (median $2.7 million).
By organizational structure
By RUCA classification
We categorized shelters by veterinary staffing levels to understand the landscape of veterinary access across California's shelter system.
Percentage of shelters in each staffing category
Thirty shelters (29%) face active recruitment challenges: they have budgeted positions they cannot fill despite sustained recruitment efforts. This represents the core of the staffing challenge.
Understanding why shelters struggle to attract veterinary talent despite having budgeted positions
The veterinary staffing challenge in California shelters is not universal understaffing—it's a fundamental inability to compete financially with private practice. Nearly one-third of shelters have budgeted positions with what they consider competitive salaries, yet cannot attract candidates because the veterinary labor market has moved beyond those levels.
The survey asked shelters why positions remain unfilled. The answer seemed paradoxical: 58.1% reported "budget exists but unable to attract candidates." Only 16.1% cited actual budgetary constraints. At first glance, this appears to be a recruitment issue, but put into context of private practice compensation, the story changes.
Percentage of shelters reporting each barrier
When 58% of shelters report "budget exists but unable to attract candidates," they mean: they've allocated funding for veterinary positions, the amount seems reasonable based on historical data, but it falls $50,000–$100,000 short of current market rates. This isn't a recruitment failure—it's a pricing failure.
Analysis of November 2025 California veterinary job postings across the state revealed a substantial gap between shelter offerings and private practice packages. When a shelter offers $163,000 and private practice offers $225,000 total compensation, "better recruitment strategies" cannot close that gap.
Private practices... are able to recruit vets at $250,000 to $300,000 plus a $50,000 bonus. Any shelter is not going to have that type of budget.
— Medium Shelter Representative, Focus Group Participant
For a recent veterinary graduate carrying $150,000–$200,000 in debt, this 20–40% compensation difference is significant. No amount of mission-driven messaging can overcome it.
Focus group discussions revealed an often-overlooked dimension of the workforce challenge: registered veterinary technicians (RVTs) and veterinary assistants are often even harder to recruit than veterinarians.
Your RVT is probably just as skilled [as] your RN. And the pay gap there is even worse than the pay gap between an MD and a DVM.
— Very Large Shelter Representative, Focus Group Participant
The RVT shortage means that even shelters with veterinarians may still be constrained by lack of support staff. A veterinarian cannot perform surgeries without trained technicians, cannot examine animals without assistants to handle them, and cannot focus on complex cases without staff to handle routine care.
The challenge intensifies dramatically as population density decreases
The veterinary staffing challenge affects California statewide, but geographic analysis reveals stark disparities. The compensation gap becomes even harder to overcome where quality of life factors compound the financial disadvantage.
Percentage of shelters achieving 75–100% staffing
No rural shelter in this survey directly employs veterinarians; all rely entirely on external partnerships or traveling vets. Small towns face similar challenges—only 50% can provide consistent spay/neuter services compared to 80–88% in other areas.
If you live in Boron, California... Your nearest veterinarian is two and a half hours away. What does that owner do if his animal gets out and gets injured?
— Very Large Shelter Representative, Focus Group Participant
Rural and small town shelters face compounding challenges. They must overcome the same $50,000–$100,000 compensation gap while also contending with geographic isolation and limited professional community, potentially reduced quality of life amenities, and distance from veterinary specialty services and professional development.
If you're going to be in California and ... pay to live in California for taxes, you might as well live near the beach or live near Tahoe... [but] that's not all of our state.
— Focus Group Participant
The challenge for rural shelters is not necessarily recruiting a full-time veterinarian but rather securing consistent, reliable access to veterinary services through part-time arrangements—rotating groups of veterinarians or regional consortiums where multiple shelters share veterinary resources.
Focus groups reveal the human dimensions behind the statistics
The survey data quantify the veterinary access challenge, but the focus groups reveal its human dimensions: the daily realities facing shelter staff, the animals in their care, and the communities they serve. Five universal themes emerged across all four focus groups, regardless of shelter size.
Every focus group identified spay/neuter access as the single most pressing veterinary need—foundational to every other aspect of shelter operations.
"If an animal is getting adopted and we're 10-15 days out for spay neuter and the animal has to sit here an extra 10-15 days, that's really hard on staff. It's hard on the adopters."
The 27.5-day difference in length of stay translates to real suffering—behavioral deterioration, overcrowding stress, and increased disease exposure.
"We are literally watching these behavioral dogs deteriorate to the point where they can't be safely adopted or they're euthanized."
Compassion fatigue emerged as a theme in every session—the emotional burden of watching animals suffer while being unable to provide timely care.
"I had a dog that was run over by a vehicle... I have this dog crying in the back. Unfortunately, the dog did not make it prior to the vet appointment."
When community members cannot access affordable veterinary care, shelters absorb the consequences through increased surrenders and abandoned animals.
"A lot of families out here on fixed incomes... when medical issues that could easily have been handled, sometimes they can't... Often we'll find them abandoning these dogs."
Inadequate veterinary access affects not just shelter animals but community health more broadly, from tick-borne disease outbreaks to child welfare cases.
"Those dogs are coming up with a lot of ticks that are leading to ehrlichia and anaplasmosis... They're actually doing a public health alert because they also carry Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever."
I have so much respect and gratitude for my veterinarian who could be elsewhere, could be doing other things, could be probably punching her ticket to a salary that's three times what she makes here. And she chooses to be here.
— Very Large Shelter Representative
Shelters demonstrate remarkable dedication despite significant constraints
Despite staffing challenges, California shelters demonstrate remarkable dedication to essential services. The survey reveals both operational resilience and the ways constraints affect delivery. However, resource constraints make it very difficult for shelters to consistently deliver services to the public.
High-consistency essential services
Public services with significant limitations
When veterinary resources are scarce, shelters understandably prioritize animals in custody over community services. This creates a cycle: reduced public access to veterinary services leads to more relinquishments, which increases intake and further strains limited resources.
The foundation of animal population control and shelter capacity management
Spay/neuter services represent the foundation of animal population control and shelter capacity management. When veterinary staffing constraints limit surgical capacity, the effects extend far beyond individual animals to affect entire communities.
Most shelters require spay/neuter before adoption, making surgical capacity a direct determinant of length of stay
Sterilization before adoption or return-to-field prevents future unwanted litters
TNR programs rely entirely on surgical capacity to manage free-roaming populations
Low-cost spay/neuter supports community members who otherwise couldn't afford care
Both top barriers connect directly to the broader veterinary workforce shortage
The spay/neuter access challenge is fundamentally a compensation challenge. Without addressing shelters' inability to compete with private practice for veterinary talent, surgical capacity will remain constrained, length of stay elevated, and shelter capacity limited.
Cascading consequences affecting every aspect of shelter operations
The veterinary staffing challenge extends far beyond empty positions. It creates cascading consequences affecting every aspect of shelter operations, animal welfare, and community service delivery.
Animals waiting weeks longer for surgery or medical clearance experience prolonged stress, increased disease exposure, and behavioral deterioration. Shelter staff face the emotional toll of watching animals languish. And when kennels remain occupied, shelters lose flexibility to accept new intakes or dedicate resources to upstream programs.
Percentage of shelters reporting each constraint
Percentage of shelters reporting each limitation
Individual shelters cannot simply reallocate existing funds to close a $50,000–$100,000 compensation gap; their budgets are often fixed or already stretched thin. Solving this challenge requires new funding from state government, philanthropy, and other external sources.
Addressing the fundamental reality that shelters are being financially outbid
Addressing California's shelter veterinary staffing challenge requires acknowledging a fundamental reality: shelters are being financially outbid by private practice by margins of $50,000–$100,000+ in total first-year compensation. No amount of improved working conditions or better recruitment messaging can overcome this massive financial disadvantage. Solutions must begin by closing the compensation gap.
"I can highly recommend the dosing protocols... if we see an animal being stressed, I go get the pills..."
"I'm having community veterinarians come into the shelter to do spay/neuter... they really like doing it."
"We did a high quality, high volume spay neuter training... we had a vet come in from LA to do the teaching."
"I'm going to try to help shelters that don't have a vet. I'm going to take over their premise permit and their DEA."
There's a huge number of new vets who go into private practice, and within six months, absolutely hate it... we need to tap into that.
— Focus Group Participant
This study of 103 California animal shelters—combining quantitative survey data with qualitative insights from 27 focus group participants—reveals a multifaceted veterinary workforce challenge affecting hundreds of thousands of animals annually.
Animal shelters are a burning building right now. And who's going to go running in there to save them? Especially when you gotta take as much flack as the veterinarians that do it do.
— Focus Group Participant
The 27.5-day difference in average length of stay between shelters with and without veterinarians represents a capacity reduction of more than 50%. This isn't sustainable, and it's costing shelters more in operational inefficiency than it would cost to provide competitive compensation.
This challenge requires coordinated action from multiple stakeholders:
Sign-on bonuses, salary supplements, enhanced loan forgiveness
Re-examine and expand RVT scope of practice
Elevate shelter medicine's professional status
Expand capacity and enhance shelter medicine curriculum
The 400,000+ animals served by these 103 shelters, and the thousands more across California, cannot wait for market forces or incremental change. They need immediate, substantial public and philanthropic investment to ensure access to the veterinary care that every animal deserves.