ORLANDO, Fla. — You’ve already decided you’ll call him Jolly or Snowflake or maybe even Mistletoe.


What You Need To Know


You spotted him on the website of the county animal shelter, and you knew you had to bring him home for the holidays.

Depending on where you live, you’d better hurry.

“Our adoptions are happening so fast that our inventory is changing daily,” said Denise Sims, a supervisor for Seminole County Animal Services.

Animal shelters throughout Central Florida and the U.S. continue to see growth in pet adoption as the coronavirus pandemic keeps people at home and in search of companionship.

Now, in December, residents are showing even more interest in adopting, at least in Seminole County. That’s typically the case, Sims said. She said she could only guess why.

“It’s that time of year,” Sims told Spectrum News. “People are home for the holidays, so it’s a perfect time to get a cat or a dog and accommodate it to your schedule at home.”

Animal-services supervisors say it’s also common for people to adopt pets and give them away as gifts, including to children.

Animal-advocacy groups caution against that. On its website blog, the Animal Health Foundation writes that the recipient of a pet might not be prepared to take care of it and that “pets are not like a sweater or piece of jewelry that can be easily returned or re-gifted.”

In a video that it calls “The Worst Gift You Can Give This Christmas,” PETA dramatizes a scenario in which a happy couple coos and purrs near a Christmas tree over a bouncy puppy that one spouse had given another. Three Christmases later, the dog stares sadly at the camera from a pen in an animal shelter.

“Animals are a 15- to 20-year commitment,” said Diane Summers, manager at Orange County Animal Services. “And they’re also a very personal choice.”

“Let’s say you want to gift me an animal,” she added. “You can go to the shelter and have a fantastic interaction with a particular dog and think it’s going to be a great fit for me, but maybe that dog doesn’t respond to me. Or maybe I don’t respond to that particular dog.”

That dog could end up back in a shelter.

But Adam Leath, director of Volusia County Animal Services, pointed Spectrum News to a 2013 study in the journal “Animals.” The study’s authors said they “found that receiving a dog or cat as a gift was not associated with impact on self-perceived love/attachment, or whether the dog or cat was still in the home.”

“There's actually no trend in the correlation between giving pets as gifts and their ultimate return back to a shelter,” Leath said, citing the study. “So, any opportunity for a pet into the home through adoption is the way that we want to go.”

Still, he suggested that pet recipients help choose their gifts. He also pointed out that some shelters offer gift certificates that fit nicely in a stocking.

That would make it “more likely that you're going to be picking out that perfect pet for you and your family,” he said.

Summers, the manager at Orange County Animal Services, suggested a gift card from a pet retailer that would help pay for supplies and food, plus a gift-giver’s offer to cover adoption fees once the gift recipient chooses the gift.

Summers also cautioned parents against giving children pets based on children’s promises. From January through March, she said, the shelter sometimes accepts returned pets from parents who declare, ‘The kid told me he would take such good care of the animal.’”

During the pandemic, animal shelters have continued efforts to promote animals via social media and their websites. Many remain open only to appointments, and some offer holiday specials such as Orange County Animals Services’s Twelve Strays of Christmas.

Summers applauds residents who decide they’re ready to get a pet for themselves.

“That’s them saying, ‘I’m ready to make this commitment,’” she said. “I would definitely discourage anyone making a commitment for somebody else. I just think that animals are such a personal choice.”