Pet Adoptions Resume at Animal Humane Society Locations
Fred Esherick made sure he was first in line at the Animal Humane Society location in Golden Valley on Tuesday.
“I [wanted to] make sure I can get in there and put a claim on the name before anybody else could,” said Esherick, who lives with his wife in St. Paul.
Esherick said they’d turned over their lovable cat, Mitten, to the Humane Society when they moved to an apartment that they thought didn’t allow cats. Once his wife was able to get a letter from a medical provider saying that Mitten was a therapy animal, they wanted to get her back.
But the Animal Humane Society closed to all adoptions earlier this spring after an outbreak of canine influenza. At the time, the Eshericks were out of luck. Until Tuesday.
On Tuesday the Coon Rapids and Golden Valley locations were finally able to reopen to adoptions, one day after the Woodbury location.
“She would always come when my wife would call her, and she’d come up and lay on my wife. If my wife was feeling stressed or whatever, Mitten would lay across her and start purring and calm her down,” said Esherick.
He was first in the door, and, after a round of paperwork and a new collar, he was reunited with Mitten.
Fred Esherick of St. Paul was first through the doors when the Golden Valley Animal Humane Society location reopened to adoptions on Tuesday.
“That’s what I’ve been struggling to be able to do, is to get her and take her home to the wife,” said Esherick. “She’s a loving cat, and that’s what my wife misses.”
Animal Humane Society staff said Mitten was actually adopted out to a different family before the canine flu outbreak and that family returned her.
“Long-term, big picture, it really was a fortuitous set of events that we were able to get Mitten back to them,” said Dr. Graham Brayshaw, directory of veterinary services.
Dr. Brayshaw said he expects cats like Mitten to acclimate more quickly after the long quarantine and the sudden adoption back into a family home.
“(Dogs) are bred selectively over thousands of years to be with people, to spend time with us,” said Dr. Brayshaw. “They’re not supposed to be around hundreds of their brethren and no real people to be around regularly.”
Brayshaw expected a slightly longer acclimation period for the dogs adopted since the centers reopened.
