Town and Country: Home for the Holidays

TOWN & COUNTRY

By Gregory DL Morris
Columnist

There are many ideas for holiday gifts, from insipid to inspired. One of the best would be to give a shelter dog or cat a forever home, but only if you have room in your heart and your life. One of the worst gift ideas would be a surprise pet. That adorable fuzzy face under the tree or next to the menorah will live another decade or more.

By all means adopt if you can! Just do it as a thoroughly considered commitment, not as spontaneous gesture. Live animals are not merely things to be given for surprise and delight. They have feelings, emotions, and needs.

Orange County Animal Services has an adoption special through the end of the year. Further information and pictures of some of the dogs and cats are on the OCAS website. https://www.orangecountync.gov/287/Available-Pets

The Animal Protection of Society Durham County, https://www.apsofdurham.org/

and the Wake County Animal Center, https://pets.wake.gov/

also have many wonderful furry companions for adoption.

The Triangle area is also lucky to have a particularly dedicated and caring fostering group, Independent Animal Rescue, that does remarkable work with dogs and cats that may have health or behavioral problems when they come into the shelter system. They provide extensive post-adoption support and guidance. https://animalrescue.net/

Staffordshire terriers and other “bully” breeds have been falsely maligned. They are strong but gentle, intelligent and loyal. Individual dogs may be aggressive due to abuse or neglect, but there are no dangerous breeds. Author’s photo.

If you cannot adopt, please consider fostering, volunteering at a facility, or donating money, food and cleaning supplies, as well as old clothing, towels, and blankets. Shelters and foster families go through vast amounts of food, wipes, towels, and bedding. Whatever new you got for the holidays, the old stuff can have a second life caring for a critter.

Not to put a downer on the festive season, but the animals in area shelters and with foster families are the lucky ones. Hundreds of thousands of dogs and cats languish at underfunded facilities around the country. The problem is particularly acute in the Southeast, and a relatively new organization, Who Will Let the Dogs Out, is addressing that crisis directly. https://www.whowillletthedogsout.org/

That remarkable group visits struggling shelters and pounds bringing support, guidance, and connection to resources not just for the animals but for the people who care for them. In just a few years WWLDO has visited almost 200 facilities in 16 states and worked hand in hand with more than a thousand animal-care professionals and volunteers. Co-founder and board president, Cara Achterberg, has written a beautiful book about the challenges and hopes for homeless pets. At just $25, available on the group’s website, it makes a great stocking stuffer.

For all the heroic and too-often heartbreaking work done by shelters, rescuers, and foster family, the crisis of unwanted animals will only worsen if spaying and neutering does not become more widely enacted. The United Spay Alliance is a national animal welfare organization dedicated exclusively to promoting affordable, accessible, and timely spay and neuter services as the solution to the crisis of cat and dog homelessness. https://www.unitedspayalliance.org/

Giving Tuesday is gone, but the needs of the many remain. Animals cannot advocate for themselves, and the true measure of any society is how it treats its most vulnerable. Through the season of caring, and all through the new year hold these principles in your heart and mind:

• Adopt if you can, and from a shelter or rescue group rather than buying. But only after careful consideration. Never give pets as gifts.
• Spaying and neutering is the only long-term solution to pet overpopulation. Fixed pets live longer, healthier lives.
• Volunteer. If you can’t adopt, foster. If you can’t foster, volunteer at a shelter, even just to take a dog for a walk or help staff an adoption table event.
• Donate. Every dollar helps save animals’ lives. Give food, cleaning supplies, old clothes, sheets, towels, and blankets.

Gregory DL Morris is a business journalist and historian who reports regularly for TLR.

This reporter can be reached at Info@TheLocalReporter.press