Arlington Shelter Offers Virtual Adoptions During Coronavirus

ARLINGTON, VA — While the Arlington County Animal Shelter may be temporarily closed to the public due to the coronavirus pandemic, residents can still adopt a pet remotely, thanks to a new service provided by the Animal Welfare League of Arlington.

"When this all first started happening, we really thought we were only going to be closed for maybe a few weeks," said Chelsea Jones, communications specialist for AWLA. "But now that we know that we have to be closed at least until the beginning of June, we realized that we needed to get the animals that we currently have in foster adopted so that we can help can continue to help other shelters in other areas."

On Wednesday, AWLA began making animals available for adoption on its website. As of Thursday afternoon, all four of the kittens in the first round of online adoptions have already been spoken for. AWLA will begin adding more animals to its website this week and next.

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"People can take a look at the website. See who they might be interested in going on a little blind date with — I guess it's not really a blind date, but a virtual date," Jones said.

Once someone has picked out an animal to adopt, they email in an application form, which can be found on the AWLA website, to the adoption team along with a photo of their driver's license.

The adoption team will followup with a phone or a Zoom call to talk about the animal's medical history, personality, and any special needs the animal might have. After that, the adoptions team will set up another Zoom call with the adopter and the foster, so the adopter can meet the pet virtually and ask any questions. If all goes well, the foster will drop the pet off at the shelter for a final medical checkup.

"If they do decide to move forward with an adoption, they would come to the shelter to pick up their pet," Jones said. "We have a low-contact procedure for that as well."

According to Jones, all of the screening and adoption policies for a virtual adoption are the same as a regular adoption.

"Nothing's going to change except that you won't be physically meeting the animal until you actually adopt them, which I know is maybe scary for some people," she said. "Our adoptions team is being very thorough and giving people as much information as possible to make sure that it is a good fit."

One advantage of this process is that all of these animals have been in a foster home for several weeks now, so the foster parents know a great deal about them.

"You're getting a lot more information about a potential new pet than you normally would," Jones said.

Even though the Arlington County animal shelter is currently closed to the public due to the coronavirus, it's still performing many vital functions for the residents of Arlington and their pets.

The shelter operates a pet food and supply pantry, which is open to anyone in Arlington.
There is a great need right now for donations from the public to keep things going. People can make monetary donations on AWLA's website or purchase something from AWLA's wish list on Amazon.

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