Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
AN ANIMAL CHARITY has warned people to “think twice” before getting a pet at this time because they fear many animals will be returned to shelters after routines get back to normal.
Head of education and communications at the Dublin Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (DSPCA), Gillian Bird, said the charity has had a “huge amount” of enquiries from people looking to foster and adopt.
“It’s been a fantastic response from the public, and we understand it because we have got people looking at weeks, potentially months of being at home,” Bird told TheJournal.ie.
However, Bird said the DSPCA is concerned that some people “who are working full time, who have kids in school” will not be able to fit these pets into their lives once Covid-19 social distancing measures end.
The charity is also concerned that people will buy animals online, rather than foster or adopt, because many rescue centres are closed to the public.
“People are sitting at home, bored on their phones looking at online platforms where you can buy animals or adopt them online,” she said.
“There are the right homes out there but it’s just really a cautionary note for people to think twice before making this commitment.
People are pretty much confined to their house and back gardens… You’ll have a pooping, peeing, barking, chewing creature to add to the stresses.
“A lot of the animals bought online have come from disreputable breeders. Animals can be taken from homes when too young, inbred, bred in bad conditions where the animals are unhealthy and have bad genetic problems.”
Bird said families with no pets usually want their first to be a puppy. These require proper vaccination and regular worm treatment, which is more difficult at the moment as many vets are operating on an emergency-only basis.
Return
The charity fears that when life returns to normal for people, some new pet owners won’t factor in kennel charges or pet loneliness.
“We could see a drastic increase in the number of people wanting to return their animals before Christmas,” Bird said.
“We get calls every October and November from people with changing circumstances wanting to return pets after the summer.”
Bird said a similar trend was evident a few years after the recession. When people lost their jobs, they stayed at home with the animals and when they regained employment, they were returned to shelters in some cases.
“We’ve seen this happen historically,” Bird said.
“If we hadn’t been educating people about the Christmas puppies and kittens, this would be worse but we fear this would be on a worse scale than after Christmas.”
Every year, animal charities issue warnings that animals are not just for Christmas after many people receive them as gifts.
The DSPCA centre is closed to the public, but the charity is still running its rescue service and taking animals in.
Bird recommends people during this time to look at fostering a pet first, rather than adopting or buying.
Advice for pet owners right now
Anyone who is interested in fostering or adopting a dog from the DSPCA can contact foster@dspca.ie or adopt@dspca.ie.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Can’t they just sell some bitcoins to cover the losses
No because they claim all BTC have been stolen, but they got hacked and database leak says otherwise
It’s all fugazi
My advice if you have a few bob spare is invest one weekends drink money in lite coins. Created by Google engineers its an alternative to bit coin and a couple of years behind it. When you consider a bit coin was what a few euro and jumped up to 700 or so at one point. A lite coin is about 11 euro a coin. If anything you cash out in months with what you invest I do see it climbing.
You could mine then but jesus its painful and even if you have best pc its not worth it
I got 2,200 xrp free – ripple. Waiting to see what happens. Sat on my free mined bitcoins for a couple of years thinking they would never be worth anything, how wrong I was :)
Thanks. Going to look into that.
Do check it out :) mining a bit coin your talking years to wsrn one coin in which case you fried a few gpu’s and a esb bill of small country. They are expensive to but also hundred for one.
That’s why I think lite coins could work. Would you really miss €100 next year if it falls apart but could get nice little return. There is few sites where you can see how much bit and lite coins ate trafing against $£€
@eye c u depends on the hashing power you have. If you have a knc 2 terrahash miner you will mine a couple of bitcoins a year at current difficulty. Scrypt based coins like litecoin/dogecoin are cheaper for the average person to get involved in. BTW you never told us how you got those scars?
From dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight. I told you that last week.
The sooner this renegade stops dragging out its 15 minutes the better it’ll be for Bitcoin as a whole!
You just have to love the word “allegedly”!
have your say