Each day, animal companions at the Humane Society for Southwest Washington (HSSW) rely on shelter workers for food, water, clean sleeping spaces and playful exercise.
Those routines were imperiled Tuesday when a blustery winter mix was forecast to swoop in to the Pacific Northwest before the weekend. Treacherous road conditions threatened shelter workers’ plans to show up for work.
Humane Society’s mother nature workaround: a shelter sleepover. Administrators polled staff for volunteers to spend one or more frosty nights at the shelter. Within minutes, a full roster of volunteers signed on for a shelter slumber party.
“These animals need us to be there,” Sam Ellington, Directer for Communications and Marketing for HSSW, told KATU News in Portland, OR. “I think it really illustrates how committed and dedicated our team is to being there for the animals. They did an amazing job stepping up.”
HSSW stockpiled food and snacks ahead of the storm. A maintenance crew person stayed on in case there was a power outage.
Shelter sleepovers are rare in tepid climates. But they’re old hat (and fleece-lined boots) for shelter workers accustomed to arctic blasts.
When a blizzard rolled in to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in 2019, Homeward Bound City Pound staff member, Shanda Antle, cuddled up with Hawking, a boxer mix, in one of the shelter’s playrooms.
“I’ve never been toastier in my life,” Antle reported to the group’s Facebook page. “I slept fantastic.”
Photo Courtesy of Homeward Bound/Facebook
Gisele Gomes, operations manager at Homeward Bound, told CBC News that it’s standard practice to do sleepovers during a snowstorm. “We are considered essential services for the animals so we really can't miss a work day,” she said.
It appears that snuggling trumped any concerns for mutual snoring. When Antle and Hawking weren’t snoozing back-to-back on an inflatable mattress, they watched movies on Netflix in the front office. At the time, Antle reported that the sleepover was the fifth she’d had during her time at Homeward Bound.
Anticipating impassable roads last January, six staffers from the Hudson Valley SPCA bunked with furry friends at the Hyde Park facility. Some slept in dog beds (swearing to their comfort), others on couches in the “meet-and-greet” rooms where prospective adopters meet hopeful adoptees.
Across North America this week, animal shelter and rescue staff are insulating their most vulnerable residents against a winter storm unlike any over the past 40 years. Volunteers are shuttling the underprivileged and their pets to warming centers where their breaths don’t freeze in mid-air.
Some people take their work home with them. A special few don’t think twice about pulling an all-nighter at the office to benefit their furry clients.