Animal shelters continue to see high demand
Furry companions still being adopted quicker than usual
PHILADELPHIA — Gianna Masini spent the first several months of the pandemic feeling isolated in her Philadelphia apartment. She and her boyfriend had talked about getting a dog for a while, but it never seemed to be the right time — until the coronavirus upended everyone’s lives and Masini found out she would be working from home for the indefinite future.
In August, Masini, 24, drove out on a whim to the Brandywine Valley SPCA in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and fell in love with Maui, a German shepherd-mix puppy.
“He’s great for the loneliness,” she said, “and he’s been really a good deterrent” against street harassment and people who aren’t keeping a 6-foot social distance on the pair’s regular walks.
Had it not been for the pandemic, Masini, who works in digital marketing, said she would likely still be dog-less, living a life absent of nips during Zoom calls and destroyed toys strewn about the floor but also one without Maui’s adorable face that melts her heart even when he misbehaves.
Masini is one of the many people who have turned to canine and feline companionship to get through the pandemic.
Animal shelters and rescue organizations say dogs and cats are still being adopted far more quickly than usual. The uptick in fosters and adoptions began when the pandemic struck in March, and the demand has not ceased nearly a year later. While puppies and kittens are always popular, now dogs and cats of all ages are in high demand.
But do not fear, the shelters note, there are dogs and cats up for adoption if would-be owners are willing to be patient and flexible.
Since March, monthly dog adoptions have increased compared with the same months in 2019, according to the COVID19 report from the national database of sheltered animal statistics, Shelter Animals Count.
The pandemic “has been really rough for everyone, but for shelter animals, it’s probably the best thing that’s ever happened to them,” said Justina Calgiano, director of advancement and public relations at Providence Animal Center, near Philadelphia.
Shelters have overcome challenges too. Providence Animal Center stopped accepting animals for about a month when the pandemic hit. They began doing appointment-only adoptions in early summer. Time slots were often booked 10 days in advance, she said, and last month they logged 16 adoptions on a Sunday, a number normally common only in their busiest adoption month, December, in pre-pandemic times.
In mid-January, Providence temporarily closed for two weeks after staff members tested positive for the coronavirus. Other shelters have also dealt with these setbacks.
The staff is facilitating more frequent transports
from high-kill shelters, she said, and people are still surrendering animals, at about the same rates as pre-pandemic.
At Brandywine Valley SPCA, adoptions were up 15% in 2020 compared with 2019, said marketing director Linda Torelli. At the same time, with people spending far more time at home than usual, the organization is seeing fewer lost and stray animals coming in, she added.
“Our shelters are definitely emptier than they have been in past years,” Torelli said. But “we look at an empty kennel as an opportunity to save a life. With all the space that’s available in our shelters, we can help other shelters.”
Like Providence, Brandywine Valley SPCA works
with shelters in the South, where there are more stray animals because the warmer climate elongates the mating season, fewer dogs and cats are spayed or neutered, and there are fewer resources and less funding for animal-saving efforts.
Last month, about 90 dogs were flown to Delaware from an overwhelmed Louisiana shelter, where some Brandywine Valley staff are completing a yearlong “embed” program to help the facility.
So while adoptions may be up, people interested in getting a rescue dog should not be dissuaded, Torelli said.
“If someone is going to adopt, it may just take a couple times of stopping by the shelter,” she said.
“There are still animals to be saved. That’s for sure.”
At Homeward Bound
Pet Adoption Center in Blackwood, Camden County, the open-admission shelter is caring for about 20% fewer animals than pre-pandemic, said director of development Gina DiMarco. Homeward Bound’s foster network has also increased, she said, as some people want to help in the short term but know their post-pandemic life might not be ideal for a pet.
It’s not just the dog or cat that benefits when they get adopted or fostered, DiMarco said.
“You have people who are so lonely and they’re looking for that companionship,” she said. “Feeling as though they’re making something good come out of this negative situation is really hopeful for folks.”
With the coronavirus not yet relenting and many people still working from home, shelters said they have not seen an increase in surrenders, which many worried would happen after the initial influx of adoptions.
Many people who adopted during the pandemic told shelter staff they’d been thinking about getting a pet for months or years, Torelli said, so she wasn’t particularly worried about a high return rate.
The shelters said they’re working even harder to create support systems for dog owners, so they can prepare their pups for when humans return to more normal work and social schedules.
Providence Animal Center encourages new dog parents to take advantage of their socialization and behavior programs, Calgiano said, or to work on their own to address animals’ separation anxiety.
“It’s not just a one-stop shop for us,” she said. “It’s about them never going into the shelter again.”
When Charlie Hancock first heard about a new musical movie centered on a girl on the spectrum, she was thrilled.
“I thought, ‘Great. I love musicals,’ ” said Hancock, a first-year student at Oxford University who is autistic and wrote an essay about the film. “‘This could be an opportunity for more representation and perhaps a type that we haven’t seen before.’ ”
Her excitement quickly turned to distress.
As details emerged in the last few months about that film, “Music,” which is directed and co-written by pop star Sia, disability rights advocates grew increasingly concerned about potential bias in the plot as well as the decision to cast a performer who wasn’t autistic. Those worries escalated into a backlash in November, when the trailer’s release set off a fight between the musician-turned-filmmaker and her online critics, and again in January, when leaked scenes seemingly endorsed a controversial physical restraint technique. Then, to the surprise of industry insiders and the autism world alike, the film garnered two Golden Globe nominations. Though Sia has since offered an olive branch to detractors, the anger remains.
“Nominating ‘Emily in Paris’ is one thing. It’s a harmless bit of mediocre fluff,” Ashley Wool, an autistic actor in New York, said, referring to the Netflix series that also received surprise Globe nominations. “‘Music’ is something that’s doing active harm to people. This gives it a veneer of legitimacy that it doesn’t deserve.”
The film, available on demand in the U.S., opened in Sia’s native Australia to dismal reviews and weak box office. It follows a girl named Music and her newly sober half sister, Zu (Kate Hudson), who becomes Music’s guardian. Music, played by Maddie Ziegler, can’t speak, and viewers are simply told that she is a “magical little girl” who sees the world differently. Song-anddance interludes illustrate what’s going on inside Music’s head. Sia, who has said Music was based on an autistic boy she knew, has described the film as “‘Rain Man,’ the musical, but with girls.”
Yet that 1988 film represents exactly the kind of stereotypical portrayal that disability rights advocates say they don’t want to see in 2021: a neurotypical star (Dustin Hoffman) playing an autistic savant stereotype.
Research shows that disabled characters are overwhelmingly played by nondisabled actors on film and TV. A recent exception was Pixar’s 2020 animated short film “Loop,” which won praise for featuring a nonspeaking autistic female actor of color in the lead voice role.
Like Music, the “Loop” actor and character had difficulty forming words but still frequently vocalized. More common is the casting of a nonautistic performer like Ziegler. The actor, a recurring Sia collaborator, ultimately replaced “a beautiful young girl nonverbal on the spectrum” who found the experience “unpleasant and stressful,” Sia said in a tweet.
Because there are so few autistic characters on screen, choices about depictions matter greatly, critics contend.
“Some people might say any representation is better than nothing. I’ve heard that argument as a Black person. I’ve heard it as queer person. I’ve heard it as a woman. I’ve heard it as an autistic,” said Morenike Giwa Onaiwu, a visiting scholar in humanities at Rice University. “I’m tired of the scraps and the crumbs. I’d rather not see us on the screen than see us in a way that fuels stigma.”
Publicists for “Music” did not reply to requests to speak to Sia or to clarify details surrounding the film. Publicists for Hudson and Ziegler, who was 14 when the film was shot in 2017, did not respond to requests for comment.
After the first trailer dropped in November and activists on Twitter criticized the film’s approach, Sia reacted angrily, arguing that she had spent three years on research and that her intentions were “awesome.” When one
autistic performer said she felt that “zero effort” had been made to cast an autistic lead, Sia replied, “Maybe you’re just a bad actor.”
Critics have also taken issue with two scenes showing Music having a meltdown and being subjected to prone restraint, a practice in which people, often disabled, are put in a facedown position while force is used to subdue them. Versions of the method have been linked to serious injuries and death. But when a neighbor, played by Leslie Odom Jr., restrains Music, it’s portrayed as an act of kindness: He lies on top of her and says he’s “crushing her” with his love. Later, in a public park, he instructs Zu on how to use the restraint on Music.
“It really shows that a project about autism will be hollow and not serve our needs — and can even be harmful to us — if we’re not helping tell the story,” Zoe
Gross, director of advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, said. “This is something that could kill people.”
Following the news that “Music” had been nominated for two Golden Globes (best musical or comedy, and best actress for Hudson), three advocacy organizations — Gross’ network, CommunicationFIRST and the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint — joined to issue an open letter expressing “grave concerns” about the restraint scenes and calling for the film to be pulled from release.
The letter noted that “a committee of nonspeaking and autistic people” had been invited to screen the film and provide feedback in late January, and the filmmakers “failed to respond and address” their recommendations, including cutting the prone restraint scenes entirely.
Hours after the nominations, Sia tweeted an apology and said that her “research was clearly not thorough enough” and that she had “listened to the wrong people.” The star, who soon after deactivated her Twitter account, also announced that a warning would be added to the film stating that it “in no way condones or recommends the use of restraint on autistic people,” and that those scenes would be removed from “all future printings.”
A change.org petition calls for the film to be “canceled.” But Onaiwu said she was not looking to destroy anyone’s career, even if she condemned the film.
“It’s not about demonizing Sia. You’re not canceled. We need allies and powerful voices,” Onaiwu said. “Use your platform to try to help dismantle ableism and promote neurodiversity and make opportunities for autistic people. You can use your experience to do that.”