PHILADELPHIA — Gianna Masini spent the first several months of the pandemic feeling isolated in her Philadelphia apartment. She and her boyfriend had talked about getting a dog for a while, but it never seemed to be the right time — until the coronavirus upended everyone’s lives and Masini found out she would be working from home for the indefinite future.
In August, Masini, 24, drove out on a whim to the Brandywine Valley SPCA in West Chester and fell in love with Maui, a German shepherd-mix puppy.
“He’s great for the loneliness,” she said, “and he’s been really a good deterrent” against street harassment and people who aren’t keeping a six-foot social distance on the pair’s regular walks.
Had it not been for the pandemic, Masini, who works in digital marketing, said she would likely still be dog-less, living a life absent of nips during Zoom calls and destroyed toys strewn about the floor but also one without Maui’s adorable face that melts her heart even when he misbehaves.
Masini is one of the many Philadelphia-area residents who have turned to canine and feline companionship to get through the pandemic.
Animal shelters and rescue organizations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey say dogs and cats are still being adopted far more quickly than usual. The uptick in fosters and adoptions began when the pandemic struck in March, and the demand has not ceased nearly a year later. While puppies and kittens are always popular, now dogs and cats of all ages are in high demand.
But do not fear, the shelters note, there are dogs and cats up for adoption if would-be owners are willing to be patient and flexible.
Nationally, organizations are seeing the same trend. Since March, monthly dog adoptions have increased compared with the same months in 2019, according to the COVID-19 report from the national database of sheltered animal statistics, Shelter Animals Count.
The pandemic “has been really rough for everyone, but for shelter animals, it’s probably the best thing that’s ever happened to them,” said Justina Calgiano, director of advancement and public relations at Providence Animal Center.
Shelters have overcome challenges, too. Providence Animal Center stopped accepting animals for about a month when the pandemic hit. They began doing appointment-only adoptions in early summer. Time slots were often booked 10 days in advance, she said, and last month they logged 16 adoptions on a Sunday, a number normally common only in their busiest adoption month, December, in pre-pandemic times.
In mid-January, Providence temporarily closed for two weeks after staff members tested positive for the coronavirus. Other shelters have also dealt with these setbacks. The Pennsylvania SPCA headquarters in Philadelphia was closed to the public last week because some staffers had to quarantine due to exposure to the virus.
Unlike some facilities in the region, Providence Animal Center does not have more empty kennels than usual, Calgiano said.
The staff is facilitating more frequent transports from high-kill shelters, she said, and people are still surrendering animals, at about the same rates as pre-pandemic.
At Brandywine Valley SPCA, which has several open-admission shelters in West Chester and Delaware, adoptions were up 15 percent in 2020 compared with 2019, said marketing director Linda Torelli. At the same time, with people spending far more time at home than usual, the organization is seeing fewer lost and stray animals coming in, she added.
“Our shelters are definitely emptier than they have been in past years,” Torelli said. But “we look at an empty kennel as an opportunity to save a life. … With all the space that’s available in our shelters, we can help other shelters.”
Like Providence, Brandywine Valley SPCA works with shelters in the South, where there are more stray animals because the warmer climate elongates the mating season, fewer dogs and cats are spayed or neutered, and there are fewer resources and less funding for animal-saving efforts.
Last month, about 90 dogs were flown to Delaware from an overwhelmed Louisiana shelter, where some Brandywine Valley staff are completing a yearlong “embed” program to help the facility.
So while adoptions may be up, people interested in getting a rescue dog should not be dissuaded, Torelli said.
With the coronavirus not yet relenting and many people still working from home, local shelters said they have not seen an increase in surrenders, which many worried would happen after the initial influx of adoptions.
Many people who adopted during the pandemic told shelter staff they’d been thinking about getting a pet for months or years, Torelli said, so she wasn’t particularly worried about a high return rate.”It’s about them never going into the shelter again.”
