Considering Pet Adoption During COVID? Read This First.
I really want to make this blog mostly about my favorite recipes and fun tips on topics I find interesting, but there’s one COVID issue I’m having a hard time letting slide. Across the country, people are adopting pets at unprecedented rates. Shelters are celebrating their newfound emptiness, and rescues can barely keep up with demand. It’s been like Christmas in July. Unfortunately, anyone who’s ever been involved with pet rescue knows that after Christmas comes New Year, and after New Year comes the dumping season.
All across the US and around the world, pets given as gifts are returned to shelters or outright abandoned in late winter and early spring. Cool aunts don’t ask before they get their nieces and nephews a new kitten for Christmas. Parents realize little Jenny isn’t going to take care of that puppy like she promised Santa she would. It turns out there’s a lot less time for walks and play sessions when school and work start back after the holiday break than families thought there would be. Thus, at the start of every year, shelters get inundated with returned adoptees as well as new arrivals originally bought from breeders. The post-Christmas dumping season doesn’t entirely negate the pre-Christmas adopting season, but it definitely puts a huge damper on the whole business — for the shelter workers and especially the abandoned pets who thought they’d found their forever homes.
Like many animal lovers/rescue volunteers, I fear the post-COVID reopening may be far worse than any post-Christmas season ever was. If quarantine has been like Christmas on steroids, then post-quarantine is going to be like January-March on steroids. Many of the people who originally adopted a cat or dog to ease the isolation of quarantining alone are starting to realize they don’t have time for a pet after all now that businesses and public spaces are beginning to open again in many states. Worldwide, shelters and rescues are anticipating or already seeing adopted pets being returned as stay-at-home orders are relaxed and people begin to get on with their lives. In addition, people are surrendering their pets due to illness and death, COVID-related financial hardship, and an infinitesimal number of animals that tested positive for the coronavirus. In a few weeks or months, these circumstances could easily result in once-empty shelters being flooded with abandoned pets. While illness, death, and job loss aren’t really in anyone’s control, a high number of returned shelter-pets and discarded breeder-pets could easily combine with surrenders due to unforeseen circumstances and push shelters and rescues into crisis.
The ultimate point of all this is to say one thing: if you’re considering a new pet to help with lockdown loneliness but aren’t absolutely, positively, beyond-the-shadow-of-any-doubt sure that you will keep the animal you’re getting once the pandemic ends, then foster; don’t adopt or buy. Fostering is great for a variety of reasons: it provides relief to overcrowded shelters, gives shelter-weary animals a far superior quality of life until they find their forever home, and offers much-needed socialization and training to animals with past trauma or behavioral issues — all without tricking rescues into believing they’ve found permanent homes for their pets or saddling them with additional animals from breeders. If you adopt without every intent to keep your pet no matter what happens (whether it be financial hardship, career changes, a new baby, etc.), you’re pulling the old bait-and-switch on both rescuers and the animals they’re trying to save. I’m not one of those people who thinks there’s absolutely no circumstance under which it’s excusable to surrender an animal; I just firmly believe that “I was lonely during lockdown, and now lockdown is over” doesn’t fall into that category.
So please, if you’re wanting a pet to ease your quarantine blues but are unsure you can fulfill the obligations of animal ownership after the coronavirus crisis has abated, fill out a volunteer application to foster a cat or dog — don’t adopt outright until you’re positive it’s the right thing for you (you can always become a foster fail later). And if you’ve already adopted a pet, do everything you can to keep it for life, regardless of how much more of an inconvenience it becomes after the pandemic is over. It’ll take some getting used to once hectic school and work schedules are back in the mix, but the adjustment period won’t last forever. Trust me, the knowledge that you stuck with it and saved an animal’s life despite the hardship will make it all worth it.
P.S.: If you need help caring for your pet, there are tons of charities dedicated to helping current owners keep their pets in their homes. You can get help with food, vet bills, even pet-related emergency/disaster relief, all at reduced or no cost. If these charities aren’t right for you, don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Back when I was in school and living on a very limited income, I bought my pets’ beds and toys at the thrift store for a few dollars, worked out payment plans with my vet, and even ran across dog food at the food bank a few times. A lot of human food banks now take pet food donations, so don’t discount them as places to find help keeping your dog or cat with you.
