Overcrowded Dakin Humane Society in need of foster parents, adopters

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) - The Dakin Humane Society in Springfield is in urgent need of help. Their shelter is now overcrowded with cats and dogs, and the situation is getting worse as a large number of animals continue to arrive.

This week alone, the shelter has taken in more than 100 cats and dogs. However, they also have other pets up for adoption. They are now asking for the public to help by becoming a foster parent or by adopting.

As of Monday, Dakin has a total of 264 animals sheltered. Many of them are scared and come from high-stress environments.

Lee Chambers, the media and development specialist at the Dakin Humane Society, told Western Mass News that summers are usually their busiest season, but those numbers may be higher than ever this year.

“For several weeks now, we’ve been seeing an incredible uptake in the number of animals that are coming to us, and we’re doing our very best to have them have a good place here to be taken care of,” Chambers said.

To put things into perspective, last week, they took in more than 100 animals. However, during the same week last year, they had only taken in 71.

While some people, especially in their social media comments, said that adoption prices at Dakin are high, Chamber said that they work with adoption standards to make it affordable to the community while making sure that those fees also cover resources needed to continue the care for other animals.

“We crunch the numbers every few years to look at what a typical cost of care for a pet is between the time we receive them and they go home,” she said. “And the average is around $705 when you consider the vaccination and the medical attention, spay and neuter surgery, microchipping, all the basic things we want our pets to have in place before they go to a home, and our adoption fees don’t even go to that number.”

Becoming a foster parent or adopting are the solutions to their overcrowding issue, something that Kameron Tang knew all too well when his family chose their next pet. The process, he said, was fairly quick.

“It’s so easy,” he told us. “You literally just go online, find the one that you love, apply, and then you get a call, and then you kind of go through, like, a really simple process of clicking a few buttons.”

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