While emergency shelters are going up all around northern New Mexico for people fleeing wildfires, animal welfare organizations are banding together to make sure furry family members have a place to run to.
One challenge of evacuating from a wildfire zone is that most emergency shelters are not going to let your pets in with you.
The conference center at Glorieta Adventure Camps, for instance, has space for dogs and some livestock, but no cats because cats need more room to roam than a crate or kennel allows.
Murad Kirdar from the Santa Fe Animal Shelter said they’ve stepped in to help by sending cats to Animal Humane in Albuquerque to free up space for evacuated felines.
Kirdar says one positive outcome from the wildfires is that the animal welfare community has banded together to support people facing the disaster. “People can keep them here for at least a month. That way they can worry about their lives knowing that their animals are well-cared for.”
There are pop-up emergency animal shelters in Glorieta, Abiquiu, and at Santa Fe’s rodeo grounds for pets and livestock.
Angela Cherry runs Helping Paws Across Borders and is helping at the Santa Fe Rodeo. She says they have most of the supplies they need to care for dogs for the next week, but that people who want to help should check back to see what's needed later.
Cherry added that there is one need that could help ease the stay for nervous dogs that mostly stay in kennels at the shelter. "The thing that we could use is things like Kongs, Nylabones, things like that, that the dogs can stay busy with through the day.”
Kirdar said the greatest help people can give would be adopting a pet now to free up some space at animal shelters that are operating at capacity, or volunteering to foster or play with penned animals.
