It is our policy to make certain that each household who adopts* an animal* is aware of the responsibilities of pet* guardianship, and is both capable of and willing to accept those moral, physical, financial, and spiritual responsibilities. Not everyone who is willing and capable and able and ready to adopt a dog should do so. Becoming a pet guardian should not make you happy. If you are interested in becoming a pet guardian in order to experience the human emotion of “love” or “fulfillment,” you are not fit to be one. Please do not become a pet guardian because you see yourself as some sort of human savior who will “rescue” an animal from an “abusive or neglectful environment.” This attitude is condescending, elitist, and damaging to animal self-esteem and autonomy. Please educate yourself.
By completing this questionnaire, you help us in determining whether you and your family are indeed ready for pet guardianship, and if the animal (fur human) you are interested in would suit your (almost certainly unsatisfactory) lifestyle. Should you agree that adopting a pet is a commitment throughout this lifetime (and any afterlives, depending on your pet’s personal spiritual beliefs which are entirely valid and not to be criticized) of your companion animal, please fill out this questionnaire.
ANIMAL(S) OF INTEREST: This is a trick question. If you choose more than one animal, we will know you are not serious about any of them. If you choose only one animal, we will know you are almost certainly an emotional sadist bent on dominating that pet in particular, and there is something deeply wrong with you. Zero points.
YOUR NAME: (All answers are wrong)
NAME OF SPOUSE: (If married, deduct one point; they are already emotionally committed to another human being and will likely mistreat any animals that come into their home. If unmarried, deduct one point; they are incapable of forming long-lasting relationships and will probably move away and leave the dog chained up in the yard during a rainstorm)
NAME OF ADDITIONAL LOVE-RECIPIENTS/SWEETIES/CO-SLEEPERS/BEDMATES: (Deduct a point for each additional polyamorous partner that lives in the house with them; add half a point for each parter who lives out-of-state)
STREET ADDRESS: (Wrong)
HOME PHONE: (Deduct ten points for any phone numbers beginning with an area code)
WORK PHONE: (They should not have a work phone)
OCCUPATION: (They should quit their job in order to care for their forever animal companion but still make enough money from it to maintain an appropriate animal lifestyle. At the minimum, they should make enough money to keep the animal on dialysis for at least fourteen years if necessary)
SPOUSE’S OCCUPATION: (Wrong)
WORK HOURS: (Any amount is too much)
TYPE OF DWELLING: (Bungalows are acceptable; cottages are not. It goes without saying that apartments are unacceptable)
OWN OR RENT: (Owners have clearly bought into capitalistic notions of ‘owning’ and ‘being in control of’ their circumstances and will almost certainly beat any cats brought into ‘their’ home; renters are untrustworthy drifters)
SIZE OF YARD:
DO YOU HAVE A POOL? (“Drowning container”)
Would you be willing to allow one of our rescue volunteers to move in with you and engage in a romantic relationship with you for at least in six months in order to gauge your emotional stability/willingness to unload the dishwasher even if it’s not your turn?
Do you currently have a pet? (If yes, who is to say their first pet will not take precedence over the new one? If no, who is to say the new animal will not wither and die from loneliness?)
Have you ever owned a pet before? (Why did you let it die? How could any loving pet guardian allow the passage of time to wreak havoc on a beloved companion? What is the matter with you?)
What is your primary reason for adopting a pet? (Jealousy, spite, revenge, emotional sadism)
Where would your pet sleep? Would you be willing to sleep on the floor if your pet indicated it wanted to sleep on your bed undisturbed? Would you be willing to sleep outside, in the rain, if your pet indicated it?
How many hours a day would your pet be left alone? (All answers are wrong)
Draw a map of all the places in the house your pet could go.
Have you ever gone on vacation? Why would you still need a vacation if you had one of our rescue animals as a companion? Who would feed it antidepressants from an eyedropper if you went away even for a weekend?
What would you feed your pet?
A. Only pre-chewed food out of my mouth as we stare into one another’s eyes
B. Flesh from my own body
C. Trick question; feeding animals is an act of cruelty and human oppression
D. Crisp $50 bills
Isn’t it inherently coercive for the two of us — both humans — to determine the fate of another living creature via questionnaire instead of letting it choose for itself where to live?
Would you be willing to donate a kidney to a pet that needed it? Would you be willing to go on a round of experimental medication designed to turn your human kidney into a dog kidney before donating your kidney? If not, why?
Have you been trained in recognizing the signs in animal depression?
What if your companion animal was ever sad or bored ever for even a single second?
If you became ill and died before your pet, how would you explain this selfish, self-indulgent behavior to Animal God?
*We find the term “adopts” problematic as it reinforces an owner/owned, parent/pet, human/animal, master/subaltern dynamic and reject it in favor of less loaded terms like “co-reside,” “engage on this journey of life together,” or “mutual existence”
*The word “animal” is an act of violence and corporate fascism
*Ditto
Tags: animal rescues, animals, not your animal rescue obviously your animal rescue does God’s own work, you don’t deserve a pet
Related Posts
A Veterinarian Would Like to Answer Your Questions!
The Sliding Scale of Wolf Sentience and Morality in Disney Films
Talking to Authors About Dogs: Amy Spalding
My Violent, Foul-Mouthed, Misandrist Parrot: A Love Story
Advanced Elephant Societies Use Physical Affection To Isolate, Distress One Another
Bird of the Month: The Raven
What do you plan to name your canine/feline life mate? All answers are wrong, as it is inherently problematic and homo*-hegemonic to assume one has the right to confer a mnemonic onto another living creature.
*sapiens
My dog responds to Pico, Pico Lico, Peter, Peaks, Pooch, Poochalooch, Smooch, Smooch Pooch, and The Poopch.
All of these are deeply problematic.
My family has a history of giving completely unoriginal and unsuitable names to pets (Crazy, Big Boy, Little Kitty) and then, pressured by the vet, making up slightly more individualized and dignified pseudonyms for their medical records. So the vet is all “How is Copper today?” and we’re like “Uhm. . . oh! She’s good, just here for a checkup.”
But they have long happy lives and beautiful healthy fur, so whatever.
At the tail-end of our gerbil owning phase, my brother and I gave all of the gerbils we had bred back to the pet store, and kept two. We kept the smallest one, who had two deformed paws from spending his formative gerbil weeks being pressed up against the glass by his bigger siblings, and named him Runty (duh).
We also kept the second smallest, who had only one deformed paw and seemed the least likely to overwhelm Runty’s delicate sensibilities. His name?
Runty’s friend.
TAIL END. BAHAHAHAHAHA. (always here for puns, obviously.)
My dog responds to Dingbat, Numnuts, Pooper, and Drooly-face if said in the right tone of voice. Clearly I’m guilty of abuse and should turn myself in to the local animal police precinct immediately.
My cats are Anne and Bonny (we named them after a pirate, because that’s the sort of people we are) but they have a variety of nicknames they respond to.
Bonny has: Princess Fuzzybutt, Thicko, Grunter, Cheerleader and a few others.
Anne has: Princess Tubbybutt, chubby, Squeaker, Scrambler, Fatty Kitty two-by-four can’t fit through the kitty door.
My cat’s name is Charlotte, but she has many nicknames of a military flavor, such as Captain Beepers, Private Purrin, General Grumbles, and Corporal Cuddles.
This is clearly reflective of the worst internalized military-industrial structures.
Hello, Ophelia is my cat’s name. What are you doing here? Are you mad at me for force-feeding you asthma medication this morning?
*hisses angrily* *backtracks and rubs face on your ankles* *considers possibility of future tuna, jumps on your lap, kneads claws just hard enough to show you I mean business* *purrs*
THIS IS CREEPY THIS IS WHAT SHE DOES
Cats, man. Cats are the bestworst.
Simultaneous purring and hissing is my favorite cat thing and never fails to impress me
You make your cat draw her own breath, Hitler?
My cat’s real name is Isis and we mostly refer to her as Booger because she is prone to eye boogers. So we’ve got conflating cultures (she is a Siamese – a breed whose very name is problematic!), Orientalism, body-shaming, and verbal abuse.
On the other hand she eats all of our charging cords and power cords so she kind of deserves it.
*The lady at the adoption place had named her I Ching, which I could not imagine ever saying to anyone without making a horrible apologetic grimace.
I CHING.
Not only is that terrible, that is just an objectively bad cat name.
Our cat Patches responds just as easily to Bitches.
I am so happy you have finished your book and have returned to delivering to us unfiltered genius at a superhuman pace.
Brb, appending footnotes to everything I’ve ever written with the phrase “The word ‘[arbitrarily-chosen word]’ is an act of violence and corporate fascism.”
I’m really glad Klaas-Jan Huntelaar the cat was basically pushed upon me by a friend who needed to get rid of kittens, because no way could I deal with this.
(note: in Holland they say you’re the boss of your cat/dog instead of owner, which I really love as a construction for some reason. They have signs you can get with pictures of the kind of dog you have that say “I watch for my boss” instead of “beware of dog.” I love them.)
I am DELIGHTED by your cat’s name. I hope you address Klaas-Jan Huntelaar by all three names at all times.
Well, more often than not I call him “catbutt” or furball” or “launchy-butt” or something like that. Or “meneer,” which just means “mr.” But he might be aware of his name being Klaas-Jan Huntelaar as well.
LAUNCHY-BUTT <3 <3 <3
He likes to sit on the couch arm and jump at me/other things, which is when he becomes Launchy-Butt.
Welp, I literally squealed at the cuteness of “I watch for my boss.” That’s the kind of person I am, apparently.
What a charming construction though!
My farm-boy husband also refers to pet owners as bosses, generally when doing adorable speaking-for-the-dog impressions and wagging his imaginary tail.
Umm, don’t tell him I put that online…
I didn’t realize my husband had another brother. Aren’t farm-boy husbands the best?
They really are. And so good at fence-building.
OH MY GOD THIS IS GREAT
Look how happy that Dutch doge is to be watching for his/her boss.
there are a couple on my street and I love seeing them
Your note delights me to no end
Does Mr. Huntelaar have compatriots? Like maybe Robin van Purrsie?
… Oh my god. I’m so sorry for that joke.
If he’d come into my life this year instead of last year he’d be named Koen Verweij.
This right here is why I got both of my pets from irresponsible acquaintances who waited too long to spay, even though I scoured Petfinder for months prior. A pet that needs a home is a pet that needs a home, and at least irresponsible people are a lot more grateful and a lot less judgey about my validity as a caregiving roommate.
And (terrible rural person opinions) at least one of your pet’s parents was domestic. So much easier to tame when they’re halfway there already.
Same here. And we rather feel as if by taking them we reduced pressure on the oversubscribed rescues in my county.
Yes, this is how my husband and I got our rabbit. Some people he met from work were looking for a new home for their rabbit because nobody wanted to take care of it anymore and so far the only offer they’d had was someone wanting it so he could feed it to his snake (NO). So of course we got the rabbit and they were very grateful to have found a new home for him. (And we are happy to have him, he is adorable even down to his pointy claws of death which I already have scars from).
Love
Honestly, if you had asked me, in the moment I learned my dog was terminal, if I wanted to donate an organ that would miraculously heal her, I would probably have considered it. The insanity of grief, no doubt.
Same with me & my cat. Damnit, Midnight, you were too young.
My sweet baby Mischief. *tear*
I am a staunch atheist and when we put our 16-year-old dog down last year, the moment the vet said “he’s gone” I would have given *anything* for him to be in heaven, his soul still alive and looking down on us.
I solve this with extreme cognitive dissonance. I am an atheist who doesn’t believe in souls or an afterlife, and does believe that I saw the spirit of my first cat the night after my parents took him to be put down. This makes no sense. It is completely irrational. I know it didn’t really happen. But I don’t care, because it means I got to say goodbye.
This is why I am afraid to fill out any animal adoption applications, because I know that EVERY ANSWER IS WRONG. THERE IS NO ANSWER. THERE ARE NO PETS. GO HOME AND DIE, UNWORTHY UNHUMAN. (Animals are now humans, animal rescue volunteers are subhumans, and all others are unhuman and should be immediately abandoned in the parking lot of a strip mall. HOW DO YOU LIKE IT, MANKIND?)
I mean. I would LOVE a dog like nobody’s business. And these people want to come and inspect my home just in case I own anything besides pet toys and giant playgrounds full of nutritious dog foods.
I know I would be a GREAT dog co-habitator, but I feel as though the adoption people would just scream at me for days when I even start to answer their questions.
My local shelter is adopting out all dogs and cats over 1 year of age for five dollars this weekend (kitten season, it is almost upon us!). I’m fairly certain they would give you a dog.
Turns out if you want to be a no-kill city, you have to adopt out your animals…(also their spay and neuter program for feral cats is astounding)
Oh, man, I could get SO MANY DOGS. Shelters around here are pretty much always over $100, although that often includes things like microchips, shots, and spay/neuter costs. But still. $5. I WANT TO COME TO YOUR TOWN.
Come to Austin! I think the normal adoption fees are in the $85 range, but since Austin’s decided to be a no-kill city, when shelters get close to capacity they run specials (like this weekend). They also price by demand- so puppies and kittens are $$$s, adults are less expensive, and the older (8+ year) kitties usually get sent to a home for free/ a nominal fee.
DO YOU HAVE CHILDREN?
If yes, deduct 10 points for subjecting potential pets to the whims of homo sapiens whose brains are not fully formed yet and are thus essentially monsters. If no, deduct 10 points. If you cannot even care for a human child, how can you possibly care for a non-human autonomous entity?
You forgot that if you don’t have children, you will be rejected because you might someday have a child and then give the pet away.
When I adopted my cat, the lady (in a basement full of cats, oh yes) was like “do you plan on having kids soon????” I was like o_O and chalked it up to cat-ladiness.
Turns out my cat is a total violent (lovable) menace and is completely unsuitable for co-habitation with a human child. They move wrong and must be punished. And now maybe I do plan on having kids soon, but too bad for me, she got the cat into my house before my man got a baby into my belly, and that’s just how it’s going to be.
Breed-Specific Rescue Question: Have you ever owned [this breed] before? [IF YES: Why do you want this breed again, you dog-racist monster, have you no idea what breed standards have done to the species? IF NO: You cannot have this breed.]
I wish this wasn’t ringing so painfully true, but I think it might actually be in the mission statement for a couple I shall not name.
Oh yeah. This rule is one reason why I don’t have a boxer. Instead, I went to a lab rescue, who ensured I had experience with labs and then gave me a Rhodesian Ridgeback/Great Dane mix. THANKS GUYS.
“Are you familiar with sloths? Sloths are great, right? You’re used to them? Good, great, excellent. I want to make sure you’re accustomed to sloths before you give you one.”
“Sure, makes sense, I love sloths and have a lot of experie-.”
“Here, have a tiger.” *scampers away*
This made me laugh so hard!
Oh wow, Ridgeback/Great Dane–large gallumphing creature with big ears?
Replace “creature” with “disaster” and you’ve got it right.
He’s actually super-sweet and looks like a gangly ridgeback with a Dane-y face. He’s just extremely high-energy. Lab:sloth::Ridgeback/Dane:tiger is eerily accurate.
I have never owned a lab before, but aren’t they one of the easier dogs to own? Would you really need lab-specific experience to handle one?
I think the only experience that helps with labs is resisting labrador-starving-puppy-eyes when they want a second dinner!
They’re just super, super high energy. And really mouthy if not trained. They’re not necessarily that easy, but also not necessarily worse than any other breeds in general. (Everybody I know whose dog has been bitten/attacked by another dog was bitten by a lab or lab-mix, though that is totally anecdata so take it with a big heaping of salt!)
In my experience with labs, you must be very very good at cleaning up garbage, dog vomit, and dog diarrhea off your floor, not be too attached to any of your leather goods or hidden christmas presents, or the integrity of your drywall. True stories, every one.
My parents got a lab when they had two teenager and one pre-teen. No wonder they got divorced.
Ha! But for reals no one should get a Border Collie mix unless they have a clear idea of what they’re in for. (Says a lover of all combinations of Border Collies, monstrous geniuses that they are.)
I know someone who adopted a border collie and didn’t train it properly, then let it run off leash and (EXTREME SAD ALERT) the dog ran over a cliff and into the ocean and died. It was horrible. And then they got ANOTHER border collie after that.
It RAN OVER A CLIFF.
A CLIFF?
A MOTHERFUCKING CLIFF!?
My dog has tried to run off a cliff before. Which is why he is never, ever off leash. I think. . . as smart as he is, he’s from a flat place and doesn’t understand precipices? And also, when that prey instinct kicks in, he’s got that BC focus and doesn’t notice a goddamn thing except where is that squirrel/bunny/person.
Yep.
lollll that’s on the dog, that’s 100% the dog’s fault, don’t run off cliffs
ahahaha i feel so terrible but i cannot stop laughing about this
I can picture the perky little thing running so fast and free. A last, yappy bark —- and gone.
tee hee hee…
Border collies are terrifying. I knew one that understood pointing, like it would look where its owner pointed. That just strikes me as amazing in a dog.
The fool looks at the finger that points to the sky
Man, they really are! My guy (a mix the size of 2 border collies, at least) clearly has a long term plan with a daily agenda towards that end. He holds grudges and plays favorites, and REMEMBERS. Ha! I wonder if the rescue will judge me for requesting their sweetest, dumbest dog, the next time I adopt. I feel like maybe they’ll understand.
Edited to confirm my love of my challenging, difficult, darling behemoth of a dog.
Oh, totally. My guy would also do an organized grid search of the dog park if his ball went missing.
(my dog (not a border collie) understands pointing! (i’m very proud of how smart he is, even though I have nothing to do with it))
A dog like that you have to feed every day.
Agreed. We adopted a “lab mix” who turned out to be a “border collie mix” who, despite 2 long walks + an hour per day at the dog park, had INTENSE anxiety about living in an apartment in the city. He now resides with my dad on 2 acres of land in California, and I miss him terribly, but not enough to put him on prozac, like the vet suggested. Sigh.
Yeah, fortunately, mine is mixed with some kind of hulk dog that means he gets tired after an hour’s worth of running around. I used to watch my friend’s pair of BC mixes when she traveled, and there was just no wearing them out. Or keeping them contained! 35 lb dogs that could scale six foot tall fences. Impossible.
It’s also really compassionate of you to do that for him: it must have been a very difficult decision. He’s a lucky dog!
He is…I do miss him a lot, though! Despite having a lot of the high needs parts of being a “collie surprise!” as someone put it, he was super-affectionate with us, great with little kids/babies, and incredibly smart. He just couldn’t handle the constant barrage of other dogs/people in hats/shopping carts/balloons/trucks/etc. that was Brooklyn, and his anxiety meant a combination of neurotic behaviors (like refusing to walk across uneven parts of a floor, or having panic attacks from noises in the hallway) mixed with increasing leash aggression in an attempt to protect me/baby from all of the aforementioned city threats. He is doing so much better out there with space and fewer people/animals to contend with on a daily basis. At least we can visit, and I know he’s having the time of his life*, but I wish they had let us know if they suspected his lineage, because he clearly would have done a lot better either in the suburbs, or a more rural area from the start. Sigh. Apparently I have Big Feelings about all of this, still.
*my dad said that for the first week, it was like he literally couldn’t believe that he was living in his own personal dog park. My dad is good people (and I suspect part border collie himself).
Smart dogs are nothing but trouble, I say! And now that I said that on the internet, no rescue organization will ever give me a dog.
From age 7 to 23 my family had a german shepherd/australian sheepdog mix (austrialian sheepdogs are very very much like collies) and yeah he was glorious and perfectly behaved but only because my family spent YEARS training him and constant exercise and omg. He was so much energy. Especially as a puppy. Once we taught him how to behave like a human and not a herding dog he was the sweetest thing every.
We got our puppy from a farm outside of town with a distinctly “don’t-tread-on-me” vibe; if I hadn’t brought my checkbook, we would never have gotten said puppy because there was no way we were going back. On our way out, we noticed a lot of rabbits all over the farm; guy who owns it said he can kill them just by throwing his knife at them, and we were more than welcome to hit one with our car and take it with us. So….
Plus side, our puppy is now a dog and is totally healthy and normal.
O_O
Oh dear Maude.
We got our puppy from a goat farm. We were not encouraged to mow down any goats on our way out whatsoever.
Timely! I adopted a new doge yesterday and have been grilled in this manner several times over the course of the past week by the very person who no longer wants said doge.
congrats on your new doge!
(ps, if you are the same laurel from hairpin, maybe i’ll see you around the dog park sometime!)
Right! Yes, same. I recall your handsome pup from tumblr. I’m looking forward to taking him to the dog park once he and I know each other better and he can be off leash.
Leashes are a tool of corporate fascism, FYI
Oh god I have a neighbor who genuinely believes that leashes are abuse, but then she also thinks it’s okay to HIT her dogs and scream at them and I have not successfully called the ASPCA on her yet but don’t get me started ahhhhhh
also she doesn’t clean up their poop, and she can’t control them and so they run into the road, and she’ll walk the female dog without a leash when she’s in HEAT, and she breeds them, oh god she is the worst human 🙁
THIS IS GENIUS AND AMAZING. And I feel like it will probably end up on animal-rescue blogs with people going “UGH WE JUST WANT WHAT’S BEST FOR THE ANIMALS!!! Not everyone is qualified to own pets!!!!”
We got our insane kittens from a woman whose cat had a litter, and they were def covered in fleas and not vaccinated/dewormed/anything other than “alive,” which I’m sure someone will argue is supporting the “backyard breeder” industry, but….the kittens were already here, man, and they needed a place to sleep and someone to love them!
Also I think I mentioned the other day that I know of a cat rescue that asks in their adoption questionnaire “Do you own a camera?” and I DON’T KNOW WHY, possible because people who don’t own cameras won’t take millions of catpix?
If you don’t own a camera, you are too poor to take care of a cat.
If you do own a camera, you are perpetuating the oppressiveness of the human gaze.
WINNER.
The sad part is that I’ve heard plenty of stories from people who have had to deal with this sort of nonsense to adopt from a place that claims some [higher calling/better conditions/better understanding of what animals need] which is why they went there instead the humane society and/or a breeder. It sounds like it’s easier to adopt a kid than it is to adopt a pet from some of these places!
Mr. Hoovian and I will be going directly to the humane society to adopt a pup in need when we’re ready to do it. We want to give a dog that needs a home a home, and we will love it to pieces. I don’t need some weird organization of nosy nancies telling me I can’t have a dog because of some arbitrary reason they decide I can’t have one.
I feel like some rescue organizations, especially the ones that are basically one person’s labor of love, veer uncomfortably close to just being “a more socially-acceptable form of animal hoarding” — with the person in charge getting hyper-attached to the animals, and steadily more and more convinced that they’re the only person who can provide a good enough home for them, and maintaining the facade that, no no, these animals aren’t all theirs, they’re up for adoption!, while in practice making it as difficult as possible for the animals to actually ever be adopted.
When I adopted my first shelter cat in Minneapolis, I walked into the shelter, played around for a while with the kitties in the back room, and walked out with a cat.
Half a decade later, when I wanted to adopt a shelter cat in Washington, DC, I did the forms and then they were like “We will bring one cat to your home and see how the cat likes it. You cannot see all of our cats; we will choose the cat we think is right for you. We are going to do a bunch of home visits. You must be prepared for us at all times.”
I dropped out of that process before I got a cat.
Because there’s nothing cats love like random travel to places they’ve never been before! Man they cannot get ENOUGH of that!
It was a front for the IRS. You dodged an audit.
I got a cat from an organization that made me choose which cat I wanted to see before I could see her, but they had a reasonable excuse in that they don’t have a shelter, they foster cats with people all over the city. So seeing more than one would be tedious.
But, great website with lots of pictures and personality info, and I now have a darling lazy fat cat who took months to warm up to us but is currently trying to be on my lap and in a sunbeam at the same time.
Good god. My cat hid behind the washing machine for almost a full day after I adopted her. She would have done that in any strange house. This is an especially stupid test.
One of the local greyhound rescues here won’t let you choose your dog, they decide which dog you get. At least with the rescue we went throught, we were able to go to the kennel and let a dog choose us. (Also, they don’t let cat-friendly dogs go to non-cat households because they’re such a rarity.)
May I propose a new official Toast stance? No pictures of sad dogs on the site.
Proposal rejected, I am preparing a slideshow of side dogs now.
You are a monster and I will send the invoice for a new keyboard (current one to be shorted out by tears) to you directly.
ugh whyyyyyy D: D: D:
omg is evil melis rising again? is this the first sign?
I will remember you, will you remember me…do-be-da-da-da
Are you planning on getting pregnant? No? Not any time in the near future? Cats live for a long time, you know. You’re sure? But you’re a young woman, so you’ll change your mind. Just you wait. Sooooo young.
In the meantime, you will agree to have an animal rescuehero evaluate the effectiveness of your chosen birth control over a period of six months. We will not be discreet.
Are you now considering getting pregnant because at least you don’t have to fill out an application for that?
So, my husband was placed on a rescue’s waitlist to adopt a husky who had bitten several people (bc Steve was a post-doc who lived in an apartment) and then he saw a cute puppy on the street and followed its owner home to see the others, picked out Denali (originally named Bruiser), and they spent 16 beautiful years together. We got him brain surgery when he was 12, and my mom fixed him his own plate of bacon and eggs when she visited, and I am grateful every day that Steve was deemed to be an unfit dog parent.
The finest, best story!
Denaliiiiii.
That is how I got my dog too! And he is lovely and beautiful and he got so many compliments about how handsome he is at the vet, so eff all those people who said I was unfit to have a dog just because I rent a fucking apartment.
My dog’s cousin is named Denali!!!! Cousin by my blood relation to the human, not by dog-blood relation, if that makes sense. Denali! My dog is a dog who bit people, too, but I love her and wanted her anyway 🙁 🙂 They were a little pushy in my adoption of her but it was just the humane society and their reasons were pretty valid.
My kitty pretty much eats crisp $50 bills (prescription food that must be special ordered by the vet) so I assume I get like, 100 points for that, thus making up for all my other shortcomings.
“Provide two references, plus at least one and preferably two vet references.” Like……I’ve had JOBS where I didn’t give four damn references. And how many vets are you supposed to have?? And who are you going to ask for a reference? Your mom? “Well, her hamster died when she was six….” APPLICATION AXED.
“Who would immediately care for your adopted dog should you become ill or die suddenly?”
I know people with CHILDREN who do not know the answer to this question.
When my mom and I adopted my cat we had to list 2 people that would be willing to take her if we died and they *suggested* that at least one of those people not be related to us. You know, in case somebody sets off a bomb at your family reunion and the cat suddenly becomes homeless… We also had to agree to home inspections (which, thankfully, didn’t happen)
I put my boyfriend down for one of these things because I had no idea what else to do, and the woman called him and asked what his relationship to me was, and when he said “she’s my girlfriend” the woman was like, “Well, so you’re a little biased, aren’t you? Haha. Ha.”
Where are you going to get two vet references if you have never had a pet??
Straight outta tumblr
The notice of denial would look like this:
You are not fit to become a pet parent
You are not fit to become a pet parent
You are not fit to become a pet parent
YOU ARE NOT FIT TO BECOME A PET PARENT
Requisite reply about how the phrase “pet parent” is inherently oppressive and you need to check your human privilege.
follow up posts include:
W O W I can’t even with the OP
and
THIS!!!!!
Now that one of my aging little dogs takes medicine (cooperatively! good boy!) twice a day *for the rest of his life*, I refer to myself as his servant. Just to make the vet laugh.
“NO BUT WHY ISN’T ANYONE TALKING ABOUT THIS [post with 10,000 notes]”
THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA ARE COVERING THIS UP AND IT IS A HATE CRIME.
[CITES WELL-KNOWN SATIRICAL NEWS SOURCE AS PROOF]
Dilemma: I don’t like the phrase “pet parent” but I *do* like to pretend my dog is a surly teen who resents his parents (us).
I also hate the phrase and also pretend my cats are unruly teenagers who we are raising to go to cat college and rewarding cat careers. OR marrying wealth.
My mom also hates being referred to as her dog’s parent. She says, “I am *your* parent; I am the dog’s *master*.”
She would not pass this application process.
This right here is why I chicken out every time I think about fostering cats from the local shelter. There’s a questionaire and home visits and even though my cat gives zero fucks if there are sometimes dirty dishes in the sink and whatnot, I’m pretty sure the shelter person will, not to mention the fact that we have houseplants and our chemical cupboard does not lock shut.
Don’t be daunted! Fostering cats is a great experience, and if you can ha g through mildly bureaucratic or tedious processes like renewing a driver’s license or getting cable installed in your home, you can hang with this.
Your experience might be totally different, BUT when my roommate was having a home visit/inspection before being allowed to adopt her dog, we frantically cleaned everything in our grubby home — and then the very nice inspection lady said that her only concern was that maybe we were a bit too fastidious about cleanliness, and wouldn’t be happy with a big dirty dog in the house.
So maybe your inspector would be impressed with the dirty dishes!
I’ve gotten all the cats & 1 of the dogs from the same shelter over the past 19 years, which helps. “No, that cat died tragically young, but that one lived to 12 (she was so mean!) and that dog is a ridiculously old 13 now and still limping along (she is so sweet! and huge & old for her size), and that cat sleeps on my feet to keep The Terrors away, so: we’re decent people. Give me a pet. Thanks.”
When we got the other dog from the German Shepherd rescue people we went through the whole home visit & vet reference thing and, yes, it’s nice to know they cared if Old Dog would like New Dog and all, but damn, that was a lot of paperwork.
My cat came from a pet store. We declawed him and it was great.
*falls with Creed arms into a sea of writhing, frothing animal rescuers*
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo why don’t you just embrace having a house filled with shredded furniture and bloody Kleenexes like we do?
I had declawed cats when I was much younger, because my great aunt who lived with us got very old and we discovered bled almost to death if the cat scratched her. I’m pretty sure the vet had to bite her tongue to keep from asking us if we could just put the great-aunt down instead of declawing the cats.
My local paper had a law enforcement roundup item about a woman who called the cops because she came home and discovered her curtains had been all torn up. The last line was a totally deadpan, “The responding officer investigated and determined that the vandalism was committed by the woman’s cat.” It was a nice break from all the honey oil lab explosion stories, but she shoulda just declawed the little pooper.
because you can’t un-declaw a cat and also when he kneads my lap it’s like getting a tiny massage from a cotton ball
“I murdered my wife!”
This is funny every time.
My vet said, and I quote: How would YOU enjoy having your fingernails ripped out?
So we didn’t ask her to declaw.
“Fine. I would love it. Please do that to me after you declaw my cat.”
The vet is French, and quite imperious. My husband and I were too chicken to bring up our lovely furniture. I guess we can always get it recovered, I said. Don’t want Catherine Deneuve to speak sternly to us, my husband said. You’re just braver than we are, Mallory
“Creed arms”
Cannot stop laughing.
“Creed arms” will never not crack my shit up.
We adopted our dog from one of these places and the lady in charge was an odd duck. She was really attached to our pup. She gave our furless, human child the side eye and told her she couldn’t change the name of our dog when she asked. I felt guilty about the deaths of our former pets and the idea of ever taking a vacation when filling out that form. Eventually, we left with our dog. She occasionally calls to check up on said dog (3 years later) and it creeps me out! They’re long rambly one-sided convos and I can never seem to end them.
There’s a rescue for Golden Retrievers I’ve checked on online, because the BF is allergic to cats and we’re moving in together. (The cats stay! They stay! But when they pass (*sob*) I can’t get more and I MUST HAVE ANIMALS so we’re talking dogs.) ANYWAY, as far as I can tell unless you live on an acre of FENCED land, you may not have a dog from this breed-specific rescue. They don’t care if we walk the dog often, if we’re active people, if we have access to a dog park. No fenced in land, no dog. I SAID GOOD DAY SIR.
Also if you already have a fence, they will come and tell you your fence is not high enough and you must built another, taller fence.
Correct. Once you have rebuilt your taller fence, they come out and tell you that the style of fence you’ve chosen is quite obviously the wrong fence, as the dog can hang himself from it if he’s just a little smarter than a Mensa inductee and can figure out how to scale the sheer 25′ of fencing, so clearly you don’t care about animals and just wanted a pretty fence, so never mind, we’re keeping the dog.
They trained at the Kafka Academy of Being Able to Achieve Things.
You forgot to include the exhaustive questions on what you would do if your animal misbehaves. I had to answer “What would you do if your pet bit or scratched a child?”
“What would you do if your animal had a bowel movement in an inappropriate place?”
“What would you do if your animal damaged furniture?”
“What would you do if your animal committed a misdemeanor?”
“What would you do if your animal committed a felony?”
Please give a unique answer for each. You are given 45 characters when filling out the online form.
If my pet committed a felony I’d ask for my cut of the take.
I had Monty for 19 wonderful years, until he passed away, a very old and happy cat. The Cat rescue people took a dim view of me allowing my cat to just die like that and would not place a cat with me. Just like nature abhors a vacuum, my husband seized his opportunity and brought home two Springer Spaniel puppies. I like dogs, but I’m a cat person.It was only last year that I was gifted with two kittens by my daughter, who got them from her coworker whose female cat had been …indiscreet.They are wonderful and very happy. No home visit required. People ask if they were “Rescue” klttens, and I say yes, they rescued me
Do they get along with the dogs? Among Mr. B_Ham’s protests against getting a dog is that our cats (currently 2 years old) would be disturbed by a new dog friend. I think dogs and cats can live in peace!
they get along great. The cats sneak up and ambush the dogs, who chase them. The cats jump up to where the dogs can’t reach and basically tease them and stick out their tongues while acting all cool and sneer-y about how dogs aren’t cool enough to sit on the mantel
That sounds on a most excellent household.
Honestly, cats will probably act disturbed about most anything, I wouldn’t take it too personally. Get a dog friend!
When we go out of town we leave my cat with my boyfriend’s parents. They have a little dog and the dog and the cat spend the evenings roaring around the house chasing each other, with the dog barking her little face off and the cat climbing furniture and then jumping onto the dog’s head. I don’t know if that counts as “living in peace” but they certainly both enjoy it.
Wait, so they were UNHAPPY with you for keeping a cat alive until it died of old age?
The Rescue interviewer said I had “let” a cat die, so they felt “uncomfortable” placing a cat with me.
It was the most amazing jaw dropping unbelievable conversation of my life. My sister didn’t believe me, so she applied; she didn’t have a pet at the time. They turned her down because she was divorced. NO LIE
She has three cats now and all are very happy, even though they grew up in a broken home
That is just completely ridiculous. I have no words.
??????
I felt bad about getting KJ from a friend instead of a rescue, but he was the only boy of the litter at my friend’s parents’ (they live in a rural area and have other cats) and hey, at least it means there’s not an extra boy running around the area.
I love this more than life itself right now.
Oh god, I forgot this until now, but I got a guinea pig from a remarkably normal guinea pig rescue lady, considering that she was a person who devoted her life to guinea pig rescue. Several years later, I moved to California and was considering getting my pig a friend (they’re social animals!).
Contacted the local rescue and had to bring my guinea pig in for supervised playtime with the potential candidates. Which included one guinea pig with an inner-ear disorder that made it impossible for her to walk straight. She zig-zagged around like a toy soldier on speed.
I really wanted that fucked-up little critter, but the rescue lady said she and my guinea pig didn’t get along well enough.
I mean, apart from, like, biting each other…how would you know if guinea pigs are “getting along”?
The rescue pig didn’t talk about thebellewitch’s guinea pig in the car on the way home. Sure sign.
Beats me! Humans give each other more time on blind dates than those pigs had to recognize each other as soulmates.
One of my cats barfed last night and when I discovered the other cat eating it I just… let it happen. Because I didn’t want to clean it myself.
I’m never going to be able to adopt any more cats 🙁
Pfft, that’s nature’s way! You should be commended for abandoning your human squeamishness and letting your cats be true to their authentic, disgusting selves.
rabbits can’t barf! it’s wonderful
(except when they’re stressed, because instead of barfing they get diarrhea)
I’ve never had to prove my suitability as a pet guardian to anyone- all my animals have come to me in one way or another. Friend who didn’t spay cat, dude giving away kittens in a park, cousin couldn’t take care of kitten (from the same park, six years later), dog wandered into my yard, cousin didn’t spay cat… currently, I really really want a dog, but am in no position to care for one. But when that changes (hopefully soon) I imagine one will appear.
I just went back and looked at the application I filled out for mine – “are you prepared to make a 20-year commitment to this animal?”
I have no idea how I got my kittens, what with being an unemployed law student. Oh well, they’re mine now and we fled the state mwahahaha.
OMG Toronto Cat Rescue, which I think is a pretty wonderful organization is now waiving the adoption fees on cats over 8 years old.
I have two cats, one of whom hates other cats. But I am so tempted.
torontocatrescue.ca and they are pretty much not crazy about adoptions. There’s an interview but it was easy.
Oh man, I volunteer at an animal rescue and they are mostly not crazy (though will not let you adopt a cat if you say you will either declaw it or let it outside if you live in the city. We are located in Cambridge, everyone basically lives in the city.) However, there are people on our volunteer list who will send out emails to the group if you come visit a cat and they think you have a “weird vibe.”
My newest kitten came with a lecture about how I should feed her a raw diet, which is basically raw chicken parts including organs. She told me I would need to read up on it because, if done wrong, your cat will die from malnutrition. I just nodded along.
Cat’s mine now! I’ll feed her cat food, thank you!
Plus she was a bit anti-vaccine. She made me a list of vaccines I could not give the cat. Vet and I rolled our eyes and gave the kitten her shots.
Great now you’ve given it Kitten Autism you monster
Once a week, I volunteer at the desk of my city’s animal shelter. People routinely freak out in the following ways:
1) Groaning to their companions okay passers-by “OH MY GOD THIS IS WORSE THAN ADOPTING A CHILD” when being shown the (single page, front and back) application
2) Getting upset that they will not be handed a pet no questions asked
3) Getting upset that most of the dogs are pit bulls
4) Getting upset that the shelter will not let them adopt a pit bull if they live in a county with a pit bull ban
5) getting upset that they are the 4th application in line for the one random chihuahua mix of the day.
6) getting upset that they have to wait for their application to be processed.
Incidences that have occurred in my presence more than zero times:
-Potential adopter mentions having left a previous unwanted pet “in the woods”
-Potential adopter explains that their (still current) next door neighbor shot and killed their previous dog
-Potential adopter becomes irate when I say that it’s usually a good idea to have someone stop in to feed your newly adopted cat daily if you’re going on vacation for a week
-Potential adopter is discovered to have previously surrendered multiple pets to the same shelter they are trying to adopt a new pet from within the last several years
-Potential adopter surrenders pet, attempts to adopt new pet of same type the same day
This shelter is the shelter that animal control brings pets to, so it’s the cat-on-fire/emaciated dog depository, and a great place to become extremely agitated with the counter volunteer if animal control has seized your pet.
Despite the totally onerous front and back single page application, and the class where a staff member explains that you have to provide food, shelter, and medical care for the pet you’ve just adopted, and explains how to gradually introduce new pets to existing pets,it is not uncommon for pets to get returned days or weeks after their adoptions. It’s kind of a bummer, but it’s how it goes.
I see a lot of backlash about adoption regulations, usually those of private shelters and rescue groups. I’m sorry so many people have had tough experiences. I sympathize. I’m glad that despite the downsides, including the occasional utterly terrible outcomes for some of the pets involved, the shelter where I chill has a pretty democratic approach to handing out cats and dogs. That said, I sometimes really wish that it wasn’t such an ongoing crisis situation there, and that they had the staff and resources to screen more carefully, and I sigh with relief when a pet I’ve grown attached to is pulled by a shelter or private rescue that’s pickier.
if they need more chihuahua mixes, come to Seattle, The shelters here are nothing but pit mixes and chihuahua mixes.
This. I’ve worked with my mom with a No-Kill Cat rescue group, and it is one of those places where you get weird people in the organization and coming to the organization. For weird people in the organization: Animal Control has discovered animal hoarding and mistreatment in the homes of foster people, and the group is expanding into rescuing rats and some other small animals, including vet treatment.
For weird people coming to the group: my current favorite (well, I say favorite, but you know, the story is kind of horrible) is the woman who wanted to adopt an animal and revealed that she had just turned her cat in to the local shelter (NOT no-kill and over-capacity). When informed that her cat was likely going to be put down, or had been already, and that they could not in good conscience adopt another animal out to the woman under these circumstances, the woman went to the shelter to retrieve her cat. Who had already been euthanized. She did not get to adopt an animal from the rescue group.
“Drowning Container”
I frequently remind my cat that I purchased him (“adoption fee” whatever) so he has to do what I say.
Which would go over a lot better if he spoke English. Alas.
My shelter pup was the opposite experience! No references or info needed. I had a pleasant, 5 minute conversation with a nice lady, paid my 35 bucks, and she was mine.
(note: as pleasant/not stressful as this was for me, she is a very weird/high maintenance breed and had clearly been badly abused… sooooo maybe they should have asked more questions)
TAIL END. BAHAHAHAHAHA. (always here for puns, obviously.)
My discussions with shelter staff were:
1) “This dog looks great! I would give it two leisurely walks and a game of fetch every day!”
“This dog is a border collie mix. You should not adopt this dog.”
2) “These two elderly German Shepherds seem sweet, but I could only take one. And the fence won’t be fixed for another week.”
“They’ve been together their whole life and start panicking if away from each other for more than a few minutes. The woman who surrendered them described them as ‘escape artists’.”
3) “This dog seems nice, I guess?”
“She’s a lovely dog! Now, before you fill out the form, let me explain the whole ‘heartworm positive’ thing so that you know what it’s going to mean long term, financially and for her health.”
4) “Okay, that dog you showed me yesterday was perfect, I have all the stuff for him bought, let’s fill out this form!”
“Which dog? Oh, that’s…um…he was just adopted this morning.”
Then I burst into tears and the shelter staff was very apologetic and helpful and got me the Best Dog Ever within the hour, and she is a sweetie and surely better than the dog who got sniped. But, yeah, all that happened after I looked into various private rescue groups and went “…eeee…” at the regulations and decided the local shelter would totally have enough options anyway.
FUR HUMAN.
YOU GUYS. FUR HUMAN.
My relatively recent rescue acquisition looked like it was going to be crazy, but ended up not so much – there were some similar questions and they did say they do an interview and then a home visit.. which they decided not to do, husband submitted the app and in I think two days they said “hey, come pick up the dog, saturday okay for you?” I think they perhaps put some of those in there in order to have a safeguard if someone is giving them a bad vibe but nothing definite, so the “oh yeah, remember we said we’d do a home visit?” can be done and then you find hey, the person saying they have a fenced in yard doesn’t! or they happened to forget the three small children and that they’re adopting an animal surrendered due to biting children. Or other wacko stuff.
So I’d like to hope most people would have a similar experience, there is some arduous stuff potentially, but also probably some not so much? If you really want the animal try it anyway?
Who wants to know about the crazy stuff that goes on with a private rural no-kill cat rescue organization? I’ve got the in. Also I can tell you all about the horrible things that happen when you foster adorable tiny kittens.
Maybe I should implement a plan to kitten-jack any mommyjacking that I encounter in life/facebook… A kind of “well, at least when you bathe them in the sink, it isn’t to get rid of their fleas. So fulfilling though. ;)” Then post a picture of an adorable bedraggled kitten.
I WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT omg write an article for the Toast or maybe just a million comments.
Also, giving my 12-week-old kittens flea baths was one of the most miserable experiences EVER. They were so mad and wet and cold even after towel cuddles. Bad times.
Soggy kittens are so sad! They always seem so much smaller when they are wet. We often blow-dry them (which they hate) because they get so shivery and we worry about them getting a cold.
Let’s see… there is the frustration of home remedies and inconsistent fosters. We had fostered a kitty, bottle-fed and bottom-wiped, up to adoptable age. He was available at the local PetsMart for a while, then moved out of the store to get some home time. Since we were unable to take him back at the time, another foster took him home with her. He stayed with her for a few weeks until we were able to pick him up from her.
We met in an empty parking lot to make the exchange, as one does. The lady gives us our formerly lush-coated and plump kitty, now replete with sneezes and scaly hairless patches all over, and informs us that she’s been treating his spots with vinegar. We bring Dean home, dose him with some antibiotics and put some proper anti-fungal cream on his ringworm spots, and he recovered very quickly. It is amazing how when one uses the proper medical treatment for an issue, the issue clears up.
Sometimes we have fosters that get busted for animal hoarding. That is always sad and frustrating, because then we not only get back the animals that they were fostering for the group, but we can end up with their extra animals.
The group, which is pretty much just a cat rescue group, has somehow begun rescuing rats. I am all for being kind to animals and giving them a proper life, but… there have been vet bills. For rats. The cat group is saving rats, which just seems counter-intuitive. Seems like we should be advocating eating the rats or something.
There is a lady who has been basically lodging her cat with the cat group for a year, after moving from a house to sharing a room with her elderly mother in a boarding house. The cat is cranky and old and pees everywhere, so eventually the fosters got tired of keeping her, and enough time had passed, that the cat was technically available for adoption at PetsMart (although, really, who’d want to take it home?). The lady makes visits to the store to see her cat and regularly corners my mother to regal her with the issues in her life. She had the cat in the boarding house for a while, and my mother, who is much sweeter than she ought to be, gave the lady her cell number, in case she needed to get the cat out of the boarding house. She now regularly receives texts about how the cat has peed on the bed and how the other boarders are awful and all the petty dramas of this woman’s life.
And now I want to go look back through all the pictures of kittens that I have (so many kittens, I don’t even remember all their names). I am not fostering at the moment and neither is my mom.
Oh man yes professional catlady goss, I wanna see if cat rescue crazy is different from dog rescue crazy
Are feral dogs something that dog rescues get to deal with? We have a couple of people who are dedicated solely to a handful of feral cat colonies. We don’t have the space or resources to capture, tame, and adopt out all of the cats there, so there is an emphasis on capture, spay or neuter, vaccinate, and release. I haven’t really worked with the colonies, so I don’t know as much about that.
Also, I feel like these groups are kind of like the Soviet Union or something, all of these volatile, ideologically different people nominally working for the same group, but in reality, one nasty conversation away from splintering into different groups – the people who want to focus on spaying and neutering feral cats, the people who want to adopt all cats to the perfect home, the people who want to take all the cats to their home, the people who want to help the overcrowded local shelter, the people who drive from Virginia to South Carolina to pick up a cat from a shelter there… With all the different issues in a rescue group, I feel like the most common disconnect is between the idealists and the realists. I try not to roll my eyes at the expenses and private causes too much, but it is hard. I have to distance myself from the group every so often lest I get too cynical about the whole thing.
TELL ME ABOUT FOSTERING!
We have one cat and want another or maybe two more but he is the greatest and we are worried that they would fight or that a new cat just might not be as generally awesome. Our local SPCA has a fostering program for cats with communicable diseases (can’t do that) and pregnant cats or little tiny kittens, so we were thinking about that.
Well, most of my hands-on experience has been with fostering little kittens. We’d take in a litter of kittens, usually found somewhere weird, like a cardboard box on the side of the road, and they’d be anywhere from 2 days old to a few weeks old. They are often cold and dirty. They get heating pads, baths, and their introduction to formula – which usually causes diarrhea. They get fed and cleaned up (I say euphemistically; they can’t poop or pee on their own until they are a bit older) every couple of hours, much like a human baby. They will scratch the hell out of your hands, since they can’t retract their little needle claws until they are older, and they are always desperately hungry when they need feeding. Once they are old enough, they should get their combo test for Feline Leukemia virus, Feline Immunodeficiency virus, and Feline Heartworm antibody, which is kind of a stressful moment, because those are all pretty nasty and expensive issues for kittens to have.
While I have really enjoyed fostering kittens (because KITTENS! They have to learn to go backwards! And purr!), it can also be stressful and exhausting and draining. You never know what kind of issues you might get, and your odds of encountering issues are pretty high, because the mothers were often stray cats with issues of their own. If you do decide to foster kittens, be prepared to give them lots of time, encounter weird, gross medical issues, and possibly have to pay something out of pocket for their food or care (depending on your organization and their resources).
It may be easier, to an extent, to foster pregnant and nursing mother cats and their kittens. The few times that we have done that, it was simpler in many ways, since the mother usually manages the feeding and cleaning on her own. They do tend to be a little wild and protective of the kittens, so you might not get to handle them as often.
There is a lot of good information on the internet, if you ignore the stuff that sounds blatantly crazy. I hope I haven’t put you off fostering, honestly we’ve had quite a few batches of kittens over maybe 10 years? The nasty things dont’ all happen at once.
The 5 page application that my newest kitten came with looked approximately like this, with additional warnings that declawing is worse than both murder and talking in the theater put together. But since it was the rescue that the now ex worked at, I had the wee baby Samus home for over a month before the application was even turned into the rescue ladies.
Please tell me you actually named your kitten the wee baby Seamus. And then fed him martini olives.
Samus, after Samus Aran, but I do run around calling her the wee baby Samus, and shooing her away from my screwdrivers.
There are multiple breed rescue orgs in Portland that retain ownership of the dog forever, and the agreement includes lines about their members showing up unannounced at your house for inspections, at any time, for the length of the dog’s life, and if what you’re doing for your (their) dog isn’t good enough, they load him into their Subaru and drive away.
I’m about 99.9% positive that once they have arranged for you to be the one to feed the dog and keep it in your house and pay its medical bills you are entirely within your rights to tell them to get bent, although they probably run into enough doormats who let them do this shit anyway.
I’m way late on this, but OH MAN I love it. I had a human baby about a year after I was turned down by multiple animal rescues for not being a good enough person, and after that experience I felt so weird about taking my baby home from the hospital. Like, you’re just going to let me leave? You’re trusting me to keep another living thing alive? Seriously? I didn’t have to sign anything, I didn’t even have to look after him during the time I was at the hospital, they just trusted me, no questions asked, to take a tiny stranger home and shape his entire worldview and keep him alive, nbd.
But…still ADOPT dont SHOP, right. This is serious.
That is more or less how my family got our cats. One was from an abandoned litter living in a barn and she was the only kitten of 4 that my neighbor could catch, which is strange considering that this cat was able to get on the highest part of every shelf in our house somehow, climb locust trees (no real branches until about 20 feet up) and kill full size rabbits and black snakes. She has also traumatized every dog we ever had. She is 18 now and much more cuddly but still not to be fucked with.
Our dogs we got from backyard breeders, so I guess we are terrible.
I read this yesterday and had one of those moments where you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I work at a municipal shelter, mostly doing PR/social media stuff (unpaid, but I think its enough hours to qualify as work regardless). We’re a little unique among local shelters in that we don’t limit an animal’s time to be adopted. If you have any friends who are “serious animal rescuers” you may have seen the eleventybillion shared posts of dogs and cats who are urgent or die tomorrow or have two days to live. When we set up our online presence, we decided not to participate in that game, because it almost always leads to 1)angry phone calls, 2) people making adoption decisions based on panic and then regretting those decisions later. So instead, we save as many as we can given our limited space and resources, make them adoptable, and give them as much time as they need. When that animal gets adopted, another one takes its place. It works well, and people seem to prefer the cute photo/funny description vs name, age, expiration date.
But here’s where it gets interesting. A particular animal will get the attention of a rescue because of its look or breed type. Sample email/comment exchange: Them: “Hi, we are savingdogsforever rescue and we are interested in muffy. How much time does she have left?” Us: “Hi savingdogsforever, muffy has as much time as she needs to be adopted. But we would love to send her with you because it frees up resources for another adoptable dog.” Them:” oh, that’s great to hear! Well, we really only like to pull dogs that are going to be killed. So we’ll pass on muffy for now. But let us know if you decide to kill her!”
I have known and worked with some awesome rescuers. It is a pleasure, and they truly are a lifeline for getting as many pets in homes as possible. But the current system seems set up to villainize shelters and deify rescues. If you don’t threaten to kill adoptable pets, they’re not interested in taking them. If you do threaten to kill adoptable pets, they’ll take them and then talk about how horrible you are and why can’t you change your evil ways. If a shelter says they’re out of money and room to keep more animals, that shelter is just not trying hard enough. If a rescue says they’re out of money and room, that rescue is being smart and looking after only what it can handle.
Look, I know there are crappy shelters out there, just like there are crappy rescues. But the difference, especially in my little corner of the world, is that one group can quit, and one group can’t. The animals never stop coming through the door. For every person who loves their dog or cat, there are 10 walking through the door to get rid of their animal because it peed on the floor/chewed up the doorframe/won’t shut up/got old/stinks/sheds, and 20 coming in on trucks because somebody just walked away. Certainly the shelter workers can get a new job in theory. But in our economy, getting a lower paying county job with benefits and a low threshold of education is like finding a diamond in a sewer pipe.
Ugh. Sorry. This isn’t exactly what I thought my first Toast comment would be. Sorry for the rant! I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with the often classist, sometimes racist, usually insufferable rescue types who think that picking out one desirable animal or “cross posting” all day long is actually doing anything real to stem the tide of unwanted animals.
But I love this site, and I love you Toasties. You are my port in the storm. Thank you.
I've been known to call the dogs over to the cat barf just to get out of cleaning it. Yes, I've been turned down by a rescue shelter, why do you ask?