Animals and Their Homes 

While it’s common to think about animal and thier homes people are interested in adopting a new pet, a lot of their work involves keeping pets at home with their owners.

“Animals home seem like a place where we’re making new homes, which we are doing,” said Carmine DiCenso, executive director of Dakin Humane Society, which operates two shelters in Western Massachusetts. “But really a lot of our work is how do we avoid that in the first place.”

During facebook F Live interview with MassLive reporter Heather Adams, DiCenso recalled a time when an 11-year-old lab mix named Rosie needed a surgery “that was out of the reach financially for the folks that had Rosie in their life.”

Shelters weren’t always able to provide the help they can today. Now instead of simply bringing Rosie into the shelter, taking her from the only family she knew, Dakin is able to help in a different way.

“Our spay neuter clinic was able to actually step in and do that surgery for them for a very reduced fee,” he said “And they were just so thankful. Rosie was a family member. It wasn’t like, ‘this is just my dog.’ This was their world.”

While this story was before the pandemic, similar stories are being heightened due to the pandemic and unemployment rates. (aniamls and their home)

The humane society new at the beginning of the pandemic that they had to ramp up their pet food donation program.

“As job loss started, and people were really struggling, we knew that that was going to be needed,” DiCenso said. “We were fortunate to receive a really large donation, 20 pallets of food from Greater Good, and that really helped boost the program.”

In a month’s time, he said, the humane society gave out over 40,000 pounds of food. During a normal year, the program supplies 28,000 pounds of food a year, he said.

In April, the nonprofit was giving out over 1,000 pounds of food a day.(animals and their homes)

“And at this point, we’ve kind of leveled off, 250 is about the average per day,” he said. “But that’s still very, very active.”

Dakin Humane Society’s program know as Dakin’s Safety Plan for Animals (SPAN) has also taken in animals surrendered by families deeply impacted by the pandemic, or owners who are hospitalized due to the virus.

The goal is to simply take care of the pets until their owners are able to bring them home again.

And while that can’t happen for every animal, those are the true happy endings.

“Let’s keep those people and animals together because they both mean so much to each other,” he said. “Keeping them together is really the goal.”