Some Relief for Displaced Pet Owners - NYTimes.com

For a cherished group of the recently homeless in New York City, temporary relief is on the way.

A 20,000-square-foot emergency boarding center for animals is tentatively scheduled to open Saturday afternoon in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, operated by a team of disaster specialists from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The pop-up pet shelter will offer free boarding and veterinary care for as many as 700 dogs, cats, birds and exotic pets that were uprooted like their owners because of Hurricane Sandy. Only owned animals will be accepted, and they can stay up to 30 days.

?We hope that a lot of people have been able to find alternative placement by now, but I really do anticipate there?s going to be a significant need,? said Tim Rickey, the senior director of the society?s field investigations and response team, which ran emergency shelters in Joplin, Mo., after the 2011 tornadoes.

As evacuation centers are closing after nearly three weeks and people are relying on federal assistance, many pet owners might be facing decisions on whether to say goodbye to the family animal.

?The whole point of setting up this emergency boarding is to prevent that,? Mr. Rickey said. ?We don?t want people to make a decision in time of crisis. Let?s give you the time to focus on yourself, and if the end result, if they have to surrender the animal, it will be the reality for some, but we hope not for most.?

Late Friday afternoon, four truckloads of supplies and 600 cages were ready to be unloaded at the facility, at 1508 Herkimer Street, near three subway stops.

The shelter will begin accepting drop-offs from owners when it opens. In conjunction with the Mayor?s Alliance for N.Y.C.?s Animals and Animal Care & Control of N.Y.C. ? part of a task force that started working before the storm ? the A.S.P.C.A. will also collect pets from shelters and evacuation centers, which still have about 80 pets.

For some pet owners who have been paying shelters to keep their pets, the boarding center is a godsend. Nicole Demmerele said she had spent $100 a day on taxis from her mother?s apartment in Bushwick to her condemned home in Far Rockaway ? just to leave food and water for Onyx, a miniature pit bull, and Honey, a Shih Tzu.

?They are my dogs,? she said. ?It?s not money that you are investing; that?s your family.?

After nine days without heat or power at the Far Rockaway house, Ms. Demmerele took the dogs to an auxiliary shelter of Sean Casey Animal Rescue in Sunset Park, with help from the Mayor?s Alliance.

Ms. Demmerele, 27, a single mother of two children, was overjoyed to learn that her dogs would be transferred to the A.S.P.C.A. shelter for a month. ?By then,? she said, ?I?ll be able to get back on my feet.?

Source: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/some-relief-for-displaced-pet-owners/

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