Receiving pets for Christmas may seem like the perfect idea for the family, but often it ends up being the opposite. Many families, after adopting pets for Christmas, return them after the holidays when they realize the work and care it takes to own a pet. So their solution is to take them back to the shelter they got them from, leaving the animals without a home once again.

Many families, especially ones with children, adopt pets as gifts for Christmas for their family members thinking it’ll be a good and innocent gift for children or their family. But most people who adopt pets as gifts don’t realize how much work goes into training and caring for a pet, especially if you adopt a young one.

Approximately 6.5 millions pets are introduced to pet shelters every year but only 3.2 millions find homes, but many of those pets see shelters again after finding a home.

Between 10 and 11 percent of people return pets the weeks following the holiday season. So many animal shelters have put the proper rules and regulations in place to prevent so many people from returning their pets and reconsidering adopting a pet as a gift unless they are sure they have all the proper accommodations for the animal. 

Many other times people go to animal shelters and buy pets impulsively without realizing how much work it is to take care of a pet and how long of a commitment it is to own one.

In the cat department at Parma Animal Shelter, they have a strict policy that animals are not handed out as surprises or gifts, and potential adopters have to submit an online application and receive approval before coming in to adopt a cat. So that they can weed out any “impulse adoptions”  and so people realize the work and commitment it is to take care of one since cats can live up to 20 years.

Knowing that potential adopters are ready to introduce a pet into their family having all the proper accommodations for them is very important to animal shelters so that’s why they have to take these reproductions before someone adopts the pet. 

Such as, in the event that the adopter gets approved. They must bring their entire family along to Parma Animal Shelter and see how they each interact with the pet so they know if they’re a good fit for that family.

With these reproductions put in place by Parma Animal Shelter, they thankfully don’t have very many cat returns during any time of the year.

But what about other animal shelters throughout the country? Well lots of animal shelters don’t accept any adoption request from about mid December to after New Years to try and prevent animals being adopted as gifts.

So hopefully with these proper rules put in place animal shelters will see a decline in returned pets and will be seeing more pets finding their forever homes.