Pet adoptions steady at TRACS

 


Despite the COVID-19 pandemic; Thompson River Animal Shelter (TRACS), has been steady with adoptions. As the state starts to slowly re-open and people continue to social distance on their outings; TRACS has implemented several strategies to keep everyone safe.

As shelters around the country saw an increase of adoptions and fostering during the shelter-in-place order, TRACS continued with business as usual, steady as ever.

Wanda Thorpe, Operations and Financial Manager of TRACS, has said the shelter is still achieving their highly successful adoption rate, by implementing a different approach when meeting with potential families during this time.

“We are only doing appointments every hour, so we are a little limited in how many we can do in a day,” Thorpe stated. The reasoning behind this, is due to that fact that adoptions take an hour to complete according to Thorpe. As the shelter practices social distancing, they have only one family in the shelter at a time.

“When we get really busy, we have two adoption specialists working at the same time. They are doing the adoptions in two different parts of the shelter to keep people away from each other, just in case. Some families are wearing face masks when they come, which helps with social distancing a lot,” Thorpe added on.

The shelter’s hours of operation have not been limited because of the pandemic, and they have been able to keep the same hours as before. “We are actually doing adoptions on our closed days to help accommodate people who need those days for their adoptions, due to the limited number of adoptions we can do in a day,” stated Thorpe.

Extra cleaning procedures have also been implemented during this time at the shelter. Each surface that people are near or have used, is cleaned every time an adoption family leaves the shelter, and before the next one comes in. “We have always had great cleaning protocols for the pets, but we are now doing the same for the human surfaces, like tables, chairs, clipboards, and pens,” she mentioned.

As multiple applications come in, and appointments sometimes have to be scheduled out a week at a time; TRACS is also taking extra precautions when it comes to finding new homes for all the animals.

“We are being careful not to adopt to folks who are working from home or are laid off and won’t be in the future.” TRACS has found that there have been several adopters who already have a dog and were looking for a companion for them. “We have lots of retired people adopting now as well. So, we don’t think we are going to get any animals back when people go back to work, Thorpe continued.

As far as people wanting to come in to foster an animal during their time at home, Thorpe didn’t see an increase on that front either. They have been lucky enough to find good adopters for all their dogs and cats.

When the crew at TRACS finds some rare, down time during this pandemic, they have been busy with renovations on the shelter. There has been a lot of cleaning and organizing for the most part. “We renovated the floor in the puppy den bathroom and painted it. We are also doing an application of fiberglass reinforced panels in the free roaming cat rooms,” Thorpe said. “We have not had to lay off or furlough any of our employees, all are here and working.”

 

Reader Comments(0)

 
 

Powered by ROAR Online Publication Software from Lions Light Corporation
© Copyright 2024