Adopt-A-Thon finds homes for shelter animals

Puppies with red and yellow “Adopt me, please” vests pranced around, anxious to find new homes Saturday at the City of Bloomington’s Animal Care and Control. 

Four hours into the one-day Adopt-A-Thon, the shelter found new homes for 14 pets.
“A normal day for us is five to eight,” shelter director Laurie Ringquist said. “A good day is ten to eleven. We’re already past a good day.”

The shelter held their first Adopt-A-Thon in summer 2010, and it resulted in 34 adoptions. At Christmas last year, another Adopt-A-Thon found homes for 29 animals.

“They seem to work well generating interest and getting people in here on a concentrated day,” Ringquist said.

The Adopt-A-Thons reduce adoption fees for dogs, puppies, cats and kittens; but guinea pigs, rats and rabbits were also for sale Saturday.

Those who purchased pets also received one-on-one time with a dog trainer and were entered in special giveaways.

While the shelter has house birds, snakes, iguanas, lizards and frogs, smaller, furrier animals such as hamsters, dogs and cats are more common.

“Most anything you would buy in a pet store in the small critters section we would have here,” Ringquist said.

However, the shelter has taken a baby alligator — illegal in Monroe County — and mistreated farm animals in the past.

Those looking to adopt have to fill out an application to determine what they’re looking for in a pet. Ringquist said the shelter tries to match perspective owners’ personalities with the animals, a process she called “matchmaking.”

“If someone’s a couch potato and said, ‘I want to adopt a border collie,’ we can tell them that’s not going to work,” Ringquist said.

Applicants also go through landlord approval and will have an applicant introduce the new dog to dogs the applicant already owns to make sure the animals get along.

Applicants can also bring their small children in to make sure the pet and child get along before finalizing the adoption.

Spring and early summer is “kitten season,” Ringquist said. Kittens were the most popular animal adopted Saturday, evidenced by Bloomington resident Forrest Burdette cuddling a tabby kitten named Wihn.

The Burdette family was originally looking for a dog, but Forrest couldn’t resist scooping Wihn out of her cage to play with her. The family has adopted 10 animals from the shelter over the past 20 years.

“We have twelve acres, so we’re always smitten for kittens,” Forrest’s mom, Deb Burdette, said.

Before adopting the kitten, Forrest and his sister Claire agreed to their mom’s rules: paying for everything and regularly cleaning the litter box.

Claire and Forrest were so enamored with Wihn they couldn’t stop petting her and agreed to clean the litter box in exchange for taking Wihn home.

“She’s the cutest living thing in the world,” Claire said.