PUSLINCH – Birds chirping and the odd bray from a nearby donkey can be heard as we walk through the sanctuary. These are the sounds the staff at the Donkey Sanctuary of Canada hear on a regular basis.
The sanctuary, home to nearly 100 donkeys, closed its gates Mar. 17, 2020, marking its second season without visitors, but staff are hopeful that won’t entirely be the case.
As pandemic restrictions are easing, staff are hopeful to have some sort of visiting permitted by the end of summer, but they don’t know what that will look like yet.
“We’re hopeful,” executive director Lesley Bayne told the Advertiser in an interview. “We miss people, we miss the visitors and the donkeys definitely do.
“It’s beautiful and quiet here but we’re so used to having visitors that it’s almost a little bit eerie without them here at least a couple days a week.”
Bayne said they’ve even noticed a change in the donkeys’ behaviour due to the absence of visitors.
“Some are so social and really crave that attention so they’re really missing all their visitors,” adding that, as soon as a staff member walks into a paddock, the donkeys are on the move.
“They just surrounded me, and I had a lineup of donkeys wanting to be brushed,” Bayne explained. “Anybody who walked into a paddock, they were inundated with donkey snuggles.”
The sanctuary also had to close its doors to volunteers, as well as some staff when the pandemic began. Any staff that could work from home did so.
“We were bare bones here for quite a while,” Bayne explained. “It was tough, we had skeleton staff just taking care of the basic needs of the donkeys for a little while.”
With things beginning to open, the sanctuary has been able to bring back some of the staff and in May, they asked a handful of volunteers that met a specific criterion to come back, but they’re hoping to have more volunteers back by the end of the summer.
“Hopefully things are getting back to normal and we can all breath a little bit easier,” Bayne said, but no dates for reopening have been set at this time.
“The last thing we want to do is set a date and then have to disappoint people, ourselves and the donkeys most of all,” she said.
Under normal circumstances, the sanctuary would open at the beginning of May for tours all the way through to October.
The sanctuary also runs Pace for the Donkeys, a 5km run event, as their big annual fundraiser in September.
Like many things these days, they had to run the event virtually last year. Bayne explained it was quite a different event not being on site, but they’re planning for it to be held in person this fall if pandemic restrictions permit.
Due to gathering restrictions, while the event would usually draw 400 people, this year’s event will be limited 100 people.
So what will reopening look like for the sanctuary this year?
Bayne said they’re still in the planning stages of reopening, but they’ve been throwing around ideas and it will definitely include welcoming smaller groups and likely booking online rather than just showing up.
Bayne said they’re looking at shorter times for tours, in addition to restrictions on shorter times around the donkeys.
“Just a lot more supervision and monitoring. It used to be more open and free, and a little more flow but these are the times we’re in now,” Bayne said, adding the sanctuary’s Open Days will likely not return this season.
“I don’t think we can have those this year because of the nature of those days where people can just come in and out as they please,” she said. “There’s a lot more restrictions, there has to be a lot more of that supervision… it’s going to take a lot more volunteers to monitor.
“We have to get our volunteers back, make sure they’re comfortable doing it, make sure we have enough to do it.”
Bayne said she is most looking forward to having visitors back in again.
“It’s so quiet here and its beautiful and serene but at the same time we’re social people and part of what we love about this is that we can share donkeys and the experience of donkeys with people.”
At this time, the Donkey Sanctuary is looking at August for reopening, but as Bayne noted, it won’t open fully to the public this year as it has been in previous years.
“I think we’re all super excited for everyone to come back to the farm. The donkeys, the social donkeys, they miss people. They want to see people,” Bayne explained.
“They want their pats and ear scratches, and we want people to learn about donkeys.”
