Animals don’t sign contracts to be hired as family pets, but they probably wouldn’t mind the extra security. Pets increasingly are becoming victims of increasing home foreclosures and a tight economy.“Our most common reason why people turn in animals is because they are moving, but it’s safe to say that they might be moving because of big housing problems,” St. Cloud Tri-County Humane Society director Vicki Davis said. “I had three in a row in a matter of three or four days of people who lost their home and were evicted and couldn’t afford their pets anymore.”
Tri-County Humane Society has seen a 6 percent increase in the number of animals it received as of Monday compared with the same time period last year, and it’s not even the busy season, Davis said.
Davis isn’t the only shelter director experiencing an upswing in surrendered pets.
Petfinder.com recently conducted a survey of its adoptable pet database that has more than 11,000 member animal rescue groups nationwide.
About half of the 1,055 animal shelters and rescue groups that replied had pets surrendered to them in the past six months because of a home foreclosure.
I live about 10 miles out of town in a sparsely-populated area of northern MN and in the past two weeks a couple of well-groomed rabbits have taken up residence in an outbuilding by my driveway...