(Prince Albert SPCA/Facebook)

By Ian Gustafson

Fluffy Friends

SPCA still adopting out despite closure to public

Mar 22, 2020 | 8:00 AM

At this time of isolation because of the need for social distancing it may be the right moment for some to think about adding a member to the household.

With everyone hunkering down at home, and many businesses being closed or restricted amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Prince Albert SPCA employees are still working hard to take care of their animals.

Manager Ashlee Bober told paNOW even though they are currently closed to the public they are adopting out animals.

“It’s closed so people can’t just come in to visit with the animals just to visit them, but we are still processing adoptions,” Bober said. “What we ask people to do who want to adopt animals from us is to send in an adoption application.”

She said those who are interested can send them in by email or by fax and the applications can be found on their website. Once the applications are approved, they will contact everyone and arrange a time to come and see the animal they’re interested in adopting.

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There was a fear she said at the beginning of the pandemic that they were going to have a hard time with adoptions, and it is still a possibility. But she explained they’ve had a lot of people reach out to help and have had interest to adopt and foster some of the animals.

“Especially if [people] are at home and are self-isolating, what better way to spend time than with an animal,” she said. “It helps us out greatly with training or if there are puppies or kittens helping to raise them, or if it’s a senior who’s not doing well in the environment here.”

Recent adoption rates have dipped but they have not completely stopped, although she noted the animals miss the extra attention they get from visitors.

“The best thing for us is to do adoptions because we can’t stop the incoming animals coming in,” she said. “If we don’t get the animals going out as well through adoptions or people reclaiming their animals then we could potentially put in a very bad pickle of having the potential of overcapacity.

“What better time to adopt an animal then when you’re home and you have that time to get to know them, to get adjusted to the family, get adjusted to the home, you know spend that time to train them.”

The Prince Albert SPCA is taking extra precautions during the pandemic to do extra cleaning especially in their adoption gallery. She said they’re doing everything they can do lower the possibility of any form of germs coming in.

“We have pretty high standards of our cleanliness regardless based on the fact of animals and the diseases they can pass around,” Bober explained. “We definitely keep the place quite clean.”

She said as of this week they’re not over capacity even though they have animals coming in often but it could change at some point. They also have an adequate amount of staff to be able to take care of all the animals properly.

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Ian.gustafson@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @iangustafson12