Dozens of dogs rehomed in North Yorkshire amid lockdown
More people sought the companionship of a four legged friend during the pandemic
Several hundred dogs have found new homes in Yorkshire amid the coronavirus pandemic, as more people sought the companionship of a four legged friend amid lockdown.
New figures released today by the RSCPA show 132 dogs were rehomed in North Yorkshire in 2020. In East Yorkshire the figure 74 and across the UK 4,877 dogs have been found a new place to live.
During the pandemic, the charity launched a virtual rehoming project so it could keep finding people to adopt animals while sticking to government lockdown restrictions.
People were encouraged to apply for pets online and staff arranged video calls and meet and greets to match animals with the right homes.
RSPCA dog welfare expert Dr Samantha Gaines said:
“At the beginning of lockdown we were concerned about how difficult it might be to rehome animals, especially as we had to pause all rehoming for several weeks until we were able to come up with a new rehoming model that adhered to the Government’s guidelines.
“Once we had approval from Defra to re-launch rehoming, we were staggered by the levels of interest we had in our animals; particularly our dogs.
"We saw an unprecedented level of interest in rehoming dogs from families who were spending more time at home and wanted the company of a furry friend.
“We had 68% more visits to the Find A Pet section of our website between March 23 - the first day of lockdown - and December 31 compared to the previous year; and views of our ‘rehoming a dog’ information spiked by 87%.
"Many of our centres received hundreds of applications for individual dogs and some canines were being snapped up before they’d even been advertised online.”
This month the charity is marking Adoptober, as it tries to find new homes for some of the pets still in their care.