There will be no going home for Christmas in Kings County

From the front door of the Kings SPCA website
Christmas Adoptions Notice
Adoptions from the Care Centre will stop from December 21st until December 31st. You may still come and pick out a pet and fill out the necessary paperwork though. The pet can then be picked up after January 1st.
If you are planning to give a holiday pet as a gift we suggest buying and wrapping the necessary supplies such as a bed, collar etc... and put them under the tree with a note saying that the owner of said items will arrive in the new year.
We appreciate your understanding
Do you know who WILL appreciate this? All the backyard breeders peddling their wares on Kijiji. All the NS Pet Store owners who still peddle animals .... because Kings County is central enough to be an easy commute to the city.
Now before the keyboards catch on fire, I am aware that for years the rescue community felt that it was too risky to adopt at the holiday season. Then one day, someone woke up and realized that when rescues wouldn't adopt out pets over the holiday season that did NOT deter people from getting a pet at that time. All it did was drive potential adopters straight into the arms of the pet stores, backyard breeders and the puppy brokers.
In fact, the worlds largest pet adoption campaign is the Home for the Holidays one, which has proven so successful that it has spread across North America. Why is that? Because the holiday season is a sentimental time ... making it the time when many families want to enrich their life with a new pet. In many cases, the Christmas vacation allows everyone a little more time to help the new family member get off on the right paw.
The bottom line is that if an adopter would pass the screening in July, there is no reason that the same adopter couldn't adopt over the holidays. Particularly these days, where in many homes the holiday festivities are much more relaxed and casual than they were at one time.
Any shelter or group that does NOT adopt out over the holiday season can become part of the problem instead of the solution. Why?

• they aren't simply sending away potential adopters ... they are also alienating the families, friends, neighbours and coworkers of every individual who cannot adopt over the holidays.
• people are still going to get a pet ... they just won't get one of the vaccinated and altered pets from rescue.
• the pets from backyard breeders/ puppy brokers and pet stores are not altered and vaccinated, ergo they are more likely to contribute to the pet overpopulation problem
• because backyard breeders have seldom breed for temperament and rarely do any genetic screening, there will just be more problems waiting down the road than if people had been allowed to adopt
• and last but not least, while the pets that are currently in their care will be safe for the holidays, not adopting over the holiday season leaves a lot of others out in the cold when there is no room at the inn.

In all fairness, the Kings SPCA are still finding their way with operating their newly opened shelter. After taking a high handed approach for years, they are having trouble finding enough volunteers to have the shelter open often enough for adopters' convenience. For some inexplicable reason, they are using the Pet Tango pet listing service to list their adoptables. Pet Tango is a free service provided by the pet insurance industry , which would be laudable except for the fact that the better known and more commonly used free Petfinder service is the first place that adopters search. Indeed, many adopters have no idea that Pet Tango exists.

But I am wandering afield. It is to be hoped that this will be the only year that this type of notice will be found on the front door of the Kings SPCA website. It would be a shame if they felt that the path to success lay in following an outmoded practice that most of the North American rescue community has discarded.

What time is it? Until there are No More Homeless Pets in Nova Scotia, it is NEVER time to turn away adopters.