Animal Shelter Lets Families Invite Their Rescues Over For Thanksgiving Dinner

An animal shelter in America allows families to invite an abandoned pet over for Thanksgiving dinner so they don't have to spend it alone.

Richmond Animal Care and Control (RACC) in Virginia started the scheme four years ago after owner Christie Chipps Petersbegan to get ready for the holiday and imagined all of the animals at the shelter being lonely for the holidays.

Christie shared a message with the local community to ask if anyone would adopt an animal for the day and 35 animals were soon on their way to spend Thanksgiving in a loving home.

Richmond Animal Care and Control)

This means that the animals get a lovely meal and a lot of love from guests while the families get to spend their day with an extra family member.

The Thanksgiving foster programme is currently in its fourth year, and the number of pets who got to a loving family for the holiday has nearly tripled.

Fosters are interviewed so they can be paired with the perfect pet, and then they then bring the animal home that day for the week-long foster.

The shelter provides all the supplies needed to give the animals a perfect Thanksgiving. (Richmond Animal Care and Control)

Speaking to The Dodo Christie said: "It's a fun twist to a traditional fostering situation for people who might've never done it before.

"The shelter provides the supplies you need, such as food, medication and a crate, and the following Wednesday after Thanksgiving the pet comes back.

"But a lot of the times, the pets never have to come back to the shelter. We try to make it really easy for people to say yes and keep that pet forever."

A huge proportion of the fostered animals end up being adopted thanks to the scheme. (Richmond Animal Care and Control)

If the families would like to adopt the animal they hosted for Thanksgiving the centre waivers the adoption fee.

It isn't just the animals that benefit either as Christie said she receives amazing feedback from the families.

She said: "The emails we get from people are so great.

"They run from, 'I'm here in Virginia on work and my family's far away - I'd love to have a friend to cook with for Thanksgiving' to messages like, 'We just lost our Labrador of 13 years and we have an empty house now ... We'd love nothing more than to have a pet here for the holiday.'

"It's just a feel-good moment as the city shelter that we can open this up for people who love animals."

Topics: Life News, Real

Mark Cunliffe

Mark is a writer at LADbible with a creative writing background and a history working at some of Manchester's biggest agencies. He loves football and music that screams a lot.

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