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Here we are in that ephemeral week between Christmas and New Year’s. Even for those who have to return to work, this week often feels like a strange period of not-normalcy, a time that’s just one step behind ordinary life.
Owning to this, then, I don’t feel like I’m entirely behind the times in continuing to blog about holiday–related stories. After all, the Twelve Days of Christmas extend into January. And when it’s a story about saving shelter pets, well, of course I’m going to share.
If someone came up to me on the street and asked me how I would feel about the concept of renting pets, my immediate reaction would be livid. “Pets are living creatures, a lifetime commitment,” I’d rage, “not something you can play with for a few days and then give back.”
But in fact one of the most important volunteer jobs one can do for a shelter is to be a foster, where essentially one does just keep a pet temporarily. One provides a safe, warm, loving home, infinitely preferable to a shelter cage, for an animal until its permanent home can be found.
Now many rescues are taking the concept one step further. The Miami Herald tells about a new program initiated by the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS), one that basically lets people rent pets.
BARCS first dipped its toes in the water of “renting out” their animals during Hurricane Irene. Officials were worried about flooding at the shelter’s physical location, and sought out as many temporary safe houses for their animals as they could. They only asked people to take the animals for the weekend, just until the danger of flooding had passed.
What they found, however, is that many people bonded with their temporary housemates and decided to keep them. That led the employees at BARCS to realize that this was a potential opportunity to help find additional homes for their dogs and cats.
Let people take the animals into their homes just on a temporary basis, no pressure involved, and hope that they’ll bond enough with the animals to want to keep them. If not, the dog or cat has only been out of the shelter for a few days, not enough for it to feel too much dissonance when returned.
Then this December BARCS joined up with the Foster a Lonely Pet for the Holidays program for the first time. The basic concept is, take a pet into your home over the holidays, just for a brief period, so it can experience that family warmth. It also makes the logistics of working in a shelter easier (that way as many employees don’t need to come in on Christmas Day to take care of the pets).
I would be a little concerned that some people who keep a pet for a few days and then decide to adopt it when they feel sad about giving it back, still might not fully understand the full commitment that pet entails. Shelter animals are often on their best behavior when first in a new home, so potential pet-owners aren’t really getting a true taste of what is involved in having a pet.
But anything that can help more pets get into permanent homes is good in my book. If you’d like pets but aren’t sure if they’d work for you, consider signing up for a Foster a Lonely Pet program.
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*(This image by sneakerdog is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
