The side effects of the arrival of covid-19 also weighed on the lives of the animals adopted in the first quarter of 2020, quickly moving from 24 hours of human love during lockdown to 12 hours of loneliness as soon as people resumed their professional and school routines, a situation that, according to Lígia Andrade, from the Midas Association, has “traumatised the animals”.

"As of March 2020, there was a boom in requests for animals for adoption ", the association's official from Matosinhos said.

In this context, they created the campaign "A pet is not just for lockdown", sensitising people to the "responsibility that comes with adopting an animal", said Lígia Andrade.

“Currently, we are receiving many requests to take in animals, and these animals are not even a year old, that is, they went to families after the pandemic arrived and now the people want to give them back”, she noted.

Among the reasons invoked, she described, are “moving house, having been evicted or plans to emigrate,” said the head of the association, which annually takes in “300 animals for adoption” and presents a “return rate of less than 1 percent”.

“There are many requests for help. There were even cases of dogs whose owners had died because of Covid-19, as happened in March and April this year”, she added.

“After the confinement ended, people resumed their normal rhythms, going to work or to school and the animal becomes a hindrance, moving from a 24-hour scenario in the company of humans to 12 hours of loneliness, which makes them enter into depression, but they do not have our capacity to express it”.