As we've talked about before, 2020 was a pretty crappy year to be a human being, but it was a great year to be a dog or cat. Your humans have been around a lot more than they usually are because of lockdowns and closings, you're getting constant attention, treats, etc.

And, for a huge number of dogs and cats that didn't have a home at the beginning of the pandemic, it was a really, really good year as adoptions and fostering began happening at a rate many shelters and animal rescue organizations could only dream of pre-pandemic.

Winnebago County Animal Services (WCAS) recently released their 2020 annual report, and there are some numbers in the report that shows how active the Rockford area was last year in the realm of adoption and fostering.

23 WIFR News:

According to the report, 566 lost pets were reunited with their families in Winnebago County during the past year. There were 1,785 adoptions and 255 animals were fostered. The fostered animals got a total of 7,451 days of foster care provided.

Although Joe Dredge is WROK's resident math guru, I attempted to crunch the numbers on this a little bit. 1,785 adoptions works out to almost 149 animals being adopted per month at WCAS, or almost 5 per day. Throw in the 255 fostered animals and the 7,000-plus days of foster care, and you can see how busy things were for WCAS in 2020. And that's just one of several spots in and around Rockford you could go if adopting a pet was your pandemic plan.

By the way, pandemic or not, any time is a good time to adopt a shelter pet. Our family has had 5 rescue animals take up residence in our home over the last 20 years, and if we had to do it all over again, we most certainly would. I've always loved this quote from author Karen Davison:

“Saving one dog will not change the world, but surely for that dog, the world will change forever."

 

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