NEW LONDON, Conn. (WFSB) - Animal shelters across Connecticut tonight are in desperate need of people to step up and adopt.

Many shelters are at, or close, to capacity.

They say recent dog surrenders and hoarding situations are a big reason why.

New London Animal Shelter services three towns, New London, East Lyme, and Waterford.

It is at about 80% capacity.

Inside the doors of the shelter, you’re greeted by dozens and dozens of packages and donations they received after a cry for help earlier this week on Facebook.

The shelter is good on supplies now, but many shelters in the state are overwhelmed with dogs and cats.

“We don’t ever want to get to 100%. If something happens tomorrow and we get a dog, we need a place open to put him. So we like to keep it as low as we can,” said Robert Yuchniuk, Animal Control Officer, Waterford and East Lyme.

Recent animal hoarding situations have put shelters across the state in this situation.

“They’ll take in - one of them was 100 dogs. Nobody has room to house 100 dogs so they have to farm out the animals to other animal control facilities to keep the numbers down,” Yuchniuk said.

A bulk of the animals at the shelter, post-COVID especially, are looking for new homes.

“We’re getting a lot of animals surrendered. We’re seeing a lot of people unfortunately just driving down the road and letting it out of the car and it becomes somebody else’s problem. Well, I’m that somebody else,” said Yuchniuk.

The big need right now is to get these animals homes.

They’re good on supplies, but gift cards would be good for when they run low.