Dakin Humane Society Presenting Black Friday Fill-a-Bag Event on Nov. 29

SPRINGFIELD — Shoppers looking for a variety of bargains are invited to attend Dakin Humane Society’s Black Friday Fill-a-Bag shopping event on Friday, Nov. 29 from 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. at its Springfield location at 171 Union St.

Attendees can pay $5 for a bag that they can fill with selected items from Dakin’s Diamonds in the Ruff Thrift Shoppe. The store typically offers gift items, decorations, housewares, games, puzzles, and more. All proceeds help animals in Dakin’s care.

For the first time in several years, Dakin will not be offering a large number of pets for adoption at reduced fees on Black Friday. There will likely be a few cats with reduced adoption fees that day, which has been a daily occurrence for the past several months, but there will not be an adoption event.

According to Dakin’s Executive Director Carmine DiCenso, “we started having Black Friday adoption specials when we had lots of young, healthy animals available for homes. Those events always generated a lot of excitement and a big turnout of hopeful adopters. But more recently, the number of pets chosen for adoption fell significantly short of the number of people that were looking for a young, healthy animal to bring home for a discounted fee.

“Special animals need special adopters,” he continued. “The conversations we need to have with potential adopters require focused one-on-one time. The Black Friday adoption events were not the ideal setting for having those conversations, or for providing the adequate time between adopter and pet. Adopters are bound to have questions about the animal’s care, and will likely need a significant amount of the staff member’s time to fully understand the animal’s needs.”