Increase In The Adoption Of ‘Rescue Dogs’ – For The Time Being

INCREASE In The Adoption Of ‘Rescue Dogs’ – For The Time Being at least, while everybody is in lockdown

During the course of the pandemic, many people, especially those living alone, have acquired pets – and for the course of this article, I will apply the term ‘pet’ to mean a dog – as a way of having some company, and who can blame them – with the main source for these dogs I think I am right in saying being one of the numerous animal shelters, who do a fantastic job I think.

Data from a particular dog shelter in Valencia shows that as the pandemic progressed, in June 2020 there was an increase of 94 per cent in the number of dogs adopted, and those numbers continued through July with 49 per cent, until, in November and December the adoptions fell again.

This data, and upward trend, is also corroborated by Gloria Tello, a councillor in Valencia City, who points out that “there are fewer and fewer animals in the Benimàmet abandoned animal center”, and further data from the Valencian Council of the College of Veterinarians, shows that when home confinement ended in May 2020, up until the end of 2020, animal adoptions shot up 37.6 per cent, and dog acquisitions went up another 17.2 per cent.

For many months, everybody has been locked up, working from home probably as well, with their pets, perhaps taking them for walks during the morning, or afternoon, but, with the lockdowns hopefully coming to an end, and possibly resulting in a return to people’s outside places of work, what will happen to these animals, who basically were acquired mainly as company while the owner was housebound, I am not referring to the thousands of owners and pets who were together long before the pandemic.

I am not a vet, or an animal psychologist, I am only voicing my opinion, but then, I can’t believe that I read more or less the exact same thing that I am thinking, in a Spanish publication, an excerpt of which I will link you to here, if it interests you, as they are words from a professional dog expert, Sara Gil, the President of the Valencian Society for the Protection of Animals and Plants (SVPAP).

Ms Gil commented that during confinement and with teleworking, the coexistence between the animal and the owners was very simple. In addition, “it was a good time to carry out adoptions since the transition phase is always easier if the family is at home and has time to dedicate themselves to the animal”.

Then she goes to the topic I finished with, “When people have returned to normal and have not been at home, the dogs have increased their anxiety, they have started to misbehave and destroy things for which some owners have tried to return them”. 

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