More people adopting dogs and cats while staying home

From cats joining video meetings to dogs getting more walks, pets seem pretty pleased with life in quarantine.

The feeling is mutual for pet lovers finding the time to bring home a furry four-legged family member.

Hilary Hayduk has been eager to get a dog for a long time, but her husband was always concerned about having time to train a puppy while they were both working all day.

“(My husband) didn’t want to come home from work in the middle of the day and I’m a teacher so my day is not flexible, so it probably would have been him doing that,” Hayduk explained.

“He still was a little opposed to the idea when we originally started the quarantine and I said, ‘You know, this would be kind of a good time,’ because when you are training a puppy, you want to be home to get them house-trained.”

On Mother’s Day, Hayduk started looking for the perfect puppy. A few days later, they drove out to meet and pick up Rosie from Running Wild Animal Rescue in Moose Jaw.

Hayduk said her three- and five-year-old daughters are completely wrapped up in playing with the puppy, even to the point of arguing over who gets to feed her.

After two months of being cooped up and kind of antsy stuck at home together 24/7, training Rosie is a way to focus everyone’s energy and attention.

“It’s kind of nice having something sort of as a project for the family so it kind of feels like everyone has a role in looking after the dog,” Hayduk said.

“(Rosie) gives us a reason to get out of the house and when we can’t go play at the park, we can go on walks and we’ve done a little bit more exploring that way just being able to be out and have a purpose for it. (It’s) a reason to get out of the house as opposed to just sticking around and not really wanting to be out anywhere, so that has been really nice.”

Since Hayduk was a child with a dog, she has always believed there are wonderful benefits to growing up in a house with a dog. It teaches kids to be gentle with animals and care for another living creature whose needs are different than their own.

“I haven’t heard so much laughing, being chased around the yard and throwing the ball for (Rosie) and all of that kind of stuff. (The girls) really have been enjoying it,” Hayduk explained.

Regina Cat Rescue sees big increase in adoptions

Dogs aren’t the only lucky pets finding forever homes. Regina Cat Rescue has been adopting out more feline friends in the past two months.

RCR volunteer co-ordinator Alanna Whippler said she can hardly keep track of the high number of cats getting adopted.

“Almost every new cat we post immediately gets at least three or four applications. We’ve got cats that have experienced maybe five or six applications just routinely and we recently had a litter of kittens where one of them had I think 17 applications just within a couple of days of the posting,” Whippler said.

Whippler said the organization did not anticipate such a big increase in numbers of cat adoptions. While many cats are going to forever homes, RCR has had to adjust a lot of the routine practices in order to follow social distancing so it takes a little bit longer to arrange meetings and handoffs.

“We’ve got some really great stories of people that have adopted and they’re super happy with their cat and they’re sort of helping them cope and get through a stressful time, ” Whippler said.

“A lot of people said this was a really good time for them to adopt, that they had been wanting to or they had been meaning to but they had a vacation or they had something else getting in the way. Then this kind of forced everybody to slow down, spend time at home and it ended up being either the perfect time to adopt or the perfect time to add another pet.”

Some of the best stories are of the older cats that have been posted on the RCR website for a long time without a lot of interest. Those cats have been getting homes.