This is Oso.

He’s a throwback Pomeranian in a lion cut, which means he looks like a small bear that has just been told something it didn’t care for. He lives with me now, in Woodberry, and he is — and I’ve thought about this a lot — the best thing that has happened to me in a long time.

He came to me through pure luck, and a network of people who legitimately love dogs. No neglect, no cruelty, nothing you could point at and say there, that’s the reason. He had a convoluted path to land in my home, in my bed. Initially, he came from a family that was in their house one week and gone the next, and that emptiness is the part I keep turning over. A dog will sit by a door for a long time.

Oso’s family disappeared when they were deported by ICE in Prince George’s County, Maryland, at the height of the current administration’s mass deportations. We don’t know much beyond the fact that they speak Spanish and named him for what he looks like, a tiny bear cub.

What I imagine, based on his temperament and the way he interacts with people — particularly children — is that he was loved and cared for and probably was their whole world. He’s playful and funny, kind to children and excited to meet them, and deeply concerned about where I am at all times. Several people before me, considering his larger story that I won’t get into, have loved this dog, have spoiled this dog, and I know that his family wouldn’t just leave him without any context at a shelter. Because that’s exactly what happened to him. No note. No “he’s got this behavioral issue,” or “we have to move,” just nothing besides the name on his collar when he got dropped off. “Oso,” Spanish for bear.

What’s actually going on

Since the current administration ramped up mass deportation enforcement in early 2025, welfare groups from Florida to Minnesota have been reporting the same thing in the same flat voice: pets surrendered, pets abandoned, pets just left. A New York Times investigation mapped the shape of it — families gone overnight, dogs waiting in houses with the lights off, volunteers setting bowls of food on the porches of places nobody lives in anymore, for animals that don’t understand why the car never came back. And it’s more news outlets than the NYT. Forbes, MassLive, Minnesota Public Radio, and on and on.  

The Louisiana SPCA says surrenders nearly doubled in 2025. A Tampa rescue is taking in three times as many animals as it did a year ago. A rescue director in South Florida put it as plainly as it can be put — her phone rings at every hour now, and it is always the same call. Owners deported. Owners detained. She said nobody calls about anything else anymore. That’s the whole job now.

Nobody is counting these animals. There is no federal anything. It lands on rescues, on shelters, and on whoever happens to live next door and notices the dog.

The hard part

A lot of these families want their pets back. Of course they do. That part isn’t complicated.

Getting a dog to a deported owner is. It isn’t hard the way a long drive is hard — it’s hard the way a wall is hard. Health certificates, vaccination records, whatever quarantine rules the destination country runs that month, airfare that climbs into the thousands. For a family that left with what fit in their hands, “impossible” is usually just the accurate word, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone.

Some people are throwing themselves at it regardless. Groups like Good Sense Dogs are arranging temporary boarding for exactly one reason: to hold a dog steady while its family works out whether coming back is even a sentence that ends with yes. Most of the time it’s a long shot. I’m not going to tell you otherwise. But somebody deciding to try, when trying is this expensive and this uncertain — that counts for something, and I’m not interested in being cool about it.

Here’s the part I can’t round off for you. Some of these dogs are not going home. Some will land with good families and have good long lives, and that’s real. And some — in shelters that were already past full before any of this started — won’t make it out. That’s not me reaching for a sad ending. That’s just the arithmetic of a finite number of crates.

What you can do

Oso landed fine. He’s got a brand color basically named after him at this point — that’s a real sentence I’m allowed to write now. But he’s one dog, and one dog is not a plan.

If you’re in a position to adopt, foster, or donate, here’s where to start locally:

• RescueMe.org — The network that connected me with Oso
• Reed’s Rescues — A network specific to senior dogs.
• BARCS Animal Shelter — Baltimore’s own, always in need.

And if adopting genuinely isn’t in the cards: sharing this does something. Fostering does something. Even just knowing it’s happening does something, because the worst feature of this whole situation is how quietly it’s going on. The deportations themselves are barbaric. The pets are the fallout — and not only the abandoned ones. Families are surrendering pets they love because the same enforcement that empties a house also makes rent and groceries unaffordable, and a household that can’t feed itself can’t feed a dog.

Some of these pets get lucky, and a lot of them don’t. All pets are our responsibility. They’re here because of us, and we need to take care of them the way they deserve. You hear it all the time: “We don’t deserve dogs.” This is a way to make that a little less true.

Oso is asleep on my bed as I write this, belly to the sky and snoring unless he hears me get up to get a glass of water. He has no idea about a single word of this. He just knows I always come back, and the door opens, and he bounces off my legs as he jumps to greet me. I smile, we hug, he gets held like he’s my child.

We think every pet should have that.