A shelter data story

Every row is a dog.
Every number is a day
they waited.

Still Waiting joins more than a decade of public shelter records to ask one clear question: which dogs wait longest for a way home?

Explore the wait

The median stay was six days. The average was 21.2. That gap is the long tail of dogs still waiting.

Interactive explorer

Who waits—and for how long?

Verified Snowflake aggregates · 89,723 complete-year stays.

Median time to outcome

6days

All dogs · All intake types

Average: 21.2 days

89,723 matched stays2014–2024

By age band

The age pattern isn't linear

tap to filter

Across time

Median wait by intake year

Peak 13.9 · 2023
1612732014: 5.1 median days20142015: 5.1 median days152016: 5.1 median days162017: 5 median days172018: 5.2 median days182019: 5.3 median days192020: 6.1 median days202021: 7.1 median days212022: 8.2 median days222023: 13.9 median days232024: 10.8 median days24

Snowflake findings

What the records revealed

01

Six days hides a long tail.

Across 89,723 stays, the median was 6 days while the average reached 21.2 days.

02

The wait peaked in 2023.

The shelter-wide median rose from 5.3 days in 2019 to 13.9 in 2023, then eased to 10.8 in 2024.

03

Intake context matters.

Median stays were 5.3 days for strays, 6.9 for owner surrenders, and 8.3 for other intake paths.

Methodology

From two messy files to one honest measure.

Snowflake cleans timestamps, matches each intake to its next valid outcome, calculates elapsed days, and builds a filterable aggregate cube without publishing animal-level records.

01Raw intakes173,813 rows
02Raw outcomes173,775 rows
03Matched stays93,792 stays
04Wait summary89,723 complete-year stays