NEWS AND VIEWS (COMMENT): Because of Covid-19, one animal shelter in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Assisi Animal Sanctuary, is using the Internet as a means to present their animals to potential adopters in order to comply with social distancing, to minimise the spread of the virus.

Assisi kitten. Photo: Jessica Black

In doing this they then allow an applicant to come to the sanctuary for a one-to-one meeting with the staff and the animal selected (after the online application is carefully considered). The benefit in this way of working is that there are less people in terms of visitors at the sanctuary because they are managing and restricting the number of visitors. The spin-off, we are told is that the animals are more settled and calmer. This indicates to me that they become unsettled with the throughput of strangers i.e. the potential adopters.

The CEO, Nigel Mason, said that the switch to this method of working has been a boon for the cats and dogs because they’re better behaved and therefore easier to rehome.

He says that they are able to home a significant number of animals while keeping people and pets safe. He even thinks that they may be rehoming more animals than before. He describes it as a bespoke system and a further benefit is that overlooked animals who’ve been at the shelter for a very long time are now being rehomed successfully with this system.

Dylan Paton, the dog unit manager, said that it had created a “more settled environment”. This had made the animals calmer and therefore more rehomable . He believes that it is decreasing the average stay time at the sanctuary. This is obviously a primary objective of the staff working there.

Comment: Is it possible that the coronavirus pandemic has forced shelters to reassess how they work and in doing so perhaps they might come up with fresh, novel methods which may prove beneficial to the animals in the long term?

Source: Belfast Live.

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