In a side room of her home, Mending Spirits Animal Rescue foster care provider Karnell Johnson held Noel, an 8- to 9-week-old kitten who kept meowing in her arms.
Johnson’s foster journey first started in the fall of 2016, when her family lost their black Lab.
“She had passed away and we just didn’t think we could go through that kind of loss again but still wanted animals around.”
That plan took a turn when her family fell in love with and adopted one of their first puppy fosters, Remy. Johnson has been fostering ever since.
For her, the mental health component is what she most gains from the experience.
“It’s my form of therapy, animal therapy. Sometimes things happen in life and for me, this is what keeps me going: the animals. It’s amazing what an animal can sense in the person and then change their reaction back to the person. They’re very intuitive.”
As for Noel, she was a stray found in Owatonna, Johnson said, an example of the uptick in cats Mending Spirits has recently seen.
Mending Spirits Board President Kristy Olson said due to rising costs felt everywhere, the strictly foster-based organization is also seeing a surge in animal surrenders.
“We’re seeing a huge influx of owner surrenders happening where people are in a financial crisis and they’re needing to rehome their animals because they can’t afford it,” Olson said.
“We have a pantry program where we supply pet food to people in need, that, we’ve had the highest volume this year of output in donating food to people.”
Mending Spirits is also not immune to rising costs, Olson said. The organization has been in a financial deficit for two consecutive years.
“At least 90% of our funding is from adoption fees. The rest of it’s through donations of fundraising. We’re all unpaid staff,” Olson said.
There are no costs incurred to foster care providers as the organization covers everything they need to take care of pets, making financial stability even more important.
“Vetting costs have increased significantly. Just a bag of dog food has increased significantly. I think everyone in the community is feeling that hardship of inflation,” said Olson, adding they’re hoping they can gain more fundraising and more sustainable donors.
With the rise in surrenders, Johnson said there’s also a need for providers like herself, adding that the more providers there are, the more animals they can put into foster homes.
She described what it’s like to care for animals like Noel.
“Mending Spirits provides all of the supplies, all of the expenses are covered, so it’s really just a matter of giving them, initially at least, giving them a quiet space to decompress and get settled in and then just acclimating them to home life, to other animals, any exposure that they may need, but not until they’ve had that decompression,” she said.
“With work and everything, I honestly just treat it as my own animal. So, if you’re familiar with animals, you just go about your daily schedule with the feeding and caring as you need.”
Amid internal staffing matters at the Blue Earth Nicollet County Humane Society and the city of Mankato’s decision to resurrect its dog pound because the humane society had reduced its services, Johnson said it’s important to work together.
“Ultimately the goal is to do best by the animal, so we want to make sure that they’re taken care of, and right now, if there’s limitations on any other programs or any other rescuers, we want to be able to step up.”
Olson also said the organization is going to start hosting microchip clinics on a regular basis and work to inform the community on responsible pet ownership.
