By Scott McCabe
The Covid-19 pandemic has effected all forms of our everyday life and it’s likely to have a long-lasting effect. However, there is some good news emerging.
Fostering rescue dogs from organisations such as Dogs Trust and The DSPCA [The Dublin society prevention of cruelty to animals] has seen a rise since the pandemic. Rescue dogs are incredibly vulnerable during this time with most of these visitor centers being closed down in order to maintain the government orders of social distancing. However, this hasn’t stopped these organisations adapting to the circumstances and through online applications, rescue centers are working tirelessly to re-home as many animals as possible. Therefore, the idea of emergency fostering animals has seen a surge in applicants.
Dogs Trust requires you to “send in photos of your garden/balcony area (if you have one), and the room indoors where the dog would be sleeping“, and if you happen to have any other dogs within the house vaccination records are also requested. After compiling your information together; Dogs Trust state on their website that “We will then match your criteria to the dogs in our care. If we haven’t got a match for you at the moment, we will keep your details on file and may contact you when a suitable dog comes into our care. If you would prefer us not to do this, please let us know“. This is a completely new method of finding new homes for their animals as prior to the Covid-19 pandemic a volunteer would visit your house and inspect the facilities.
If fostering a dog isn’t for you, you can still play your part by making a donation to these organisations using these links ;
Dogs Trust –https://www.dogstrust.ie/get-involved/
DSPCA – https://www.dspca.ie/how-to-help/
Donations are a key component for these rescue homes to operate and with a major drop in funding due to the pandemic, your help is needed more than ever.
‘Dave Peyton’ recently went through the process of emergency fostering from Dogs Trust and the Peyton’s opened up their home to ‘Buddy’. ‘Peyton’ described the overall, process of emergency fostering as “fairly straight forward; All told the process was very easy and the ‘Dogs Trust’ people were very helpful over the phone and Zoom call. The paperwork was no problem. One questionnaire by email and we signed two copies of a fostering agreement at the center when we collected Buddy”. The process doesn’t stop there though as ‘Peyton’ went onto say “They have called us once this week to see how we are getting on. We have a dedicated adoption advisor that we can ring with any issues and we are to have a call from one of their behavior people today for advice on his reactivity to other dogs and how best to deal with it.”
As much as these Animal organizations continue to obey social distancing and other restrictions by closing down their visitor centers, or by analyzing house-holds with images. Some members of the public have gone against this idea and have broken the rules.
Adding a new member to the family is a wonderful experience when done correctly, one resident learned this the hard way when he drove 450km from co. Derry to co. Kerry in order to purchase a puppy during the lockdown. The Derry man has since been sentenced to four weeks in prison for his actions and labelled the sentencing as “unfair”.
ScottMcCabe2020 