Rehoming your pet is heartbreaking. It is often due to circumstances like the loss of a job or home, an illness or injury, or PCSing to a location where personal animals are not allowed.
Here are some tips on how to find your dog or cat the best possible home.
Put your pet’s best paw forward
Take a good color photo of Fluffy or Fido. If you already have a good photo, make it readily available for use. If not, take one which shows your pet’s best side, as soon as possible.
Shelter intake pictures may show a fearful, depressed or highly stressed animal in a less-than-ideal setting. If you are surrendering your pet to a shelter they may use images that you supply.
Prepare a brief description/biography. List any training your dog or cat has had: house-, crate-, and/or obedience training. How does she get along with other animals, children, strangers?
Describe her medical history and current medical conditions, including any medication she may be taking. What are her favorite and least favorite foods, treats, and activities?
What makes your pet special?
Be honest. Full disclosure will help you find a new home that is a good fit for your beloved dog or cat, and ease his transition to a new home. Disclosing up front that your four-legged family member needs more training, for example, may spare him from being dismissed from his next home for being unruly.
Prepare your pet. Make sure your dog or cat is groomed, up-to-date on her vaccinations, and is flea- and tick-free. If you have not done so already, have your pet spayed or neutered.
Low-cost vaccination and spay/neuter clinics may be available in your area. Check with local shelters and pet stores.
Do not get personal
Avoid personal or classified ads at all costs.
As tempting as it may seem, rehoming a pet through Craigslist may place your pet in significant peril. Many animals advertised on Craigslist have wound up victims of abuse and neglect, rehomed unknowingly with backyard breeders, hoarders, dog-fighting rings or other criminal elements.
Black cats and kittens rehomed through Craigslist have been found tortured to death. There are better options.
Rehome
Consider a professionally managed pet matching community, such as Rehome. It is managed by Adopt-A-Pet with support from the Petco Foundation.
Adopt-A-Pet is the nation’s largest nonprofit pet adoption website, and your pet’s profile can be seen by millions of potential pet adopters.
Rehome provides detailed tips and checklists on how to create a pet profile, review applications, meet potential adopters, and finalize your pet’s adoption.
Get Your Pet
Another excellent do-it-yourself resource is Get Your Pet. This online service offers ways for people who need to rehome their pets to connect with people who want to adopt.
This service offers a safer way to conduct person-to-person adoptions than classified advertising. Get Your Pet offers guidance on careful vetting, tips on what to ask, where to meet, and even lists of participating veterinarians who will provide a free pet exam.
Friends and family
Ask trusted family, friends, coworkers, and others you know to adopt your dog or cat. Speak with other pet guardians in your area, veterinarians, groomers, pet store staff, boarding or daycare staff, and others in the local pet care industry.
Many nonprofit humane societies and animal rescues accept courtesy listings for their websites from those seeking to rehome a companion animal.
Social networking on animal rescues’ or breed-specific Facebook sites may expedite the rehoming process.
Once a prospective adopter contacts you, consider interviewing the individual and conducting a home visit to make sure your pet’s next home is his forever home.
Does the adopter have prior experience caring for pets? A home and/or yard big enough to accommodate your animal? Do they have the financial means to care for your pet – especially if he has special needs or a chronic medical condition?
Most importantly, do they have realistic expectations about living with your pet? For instance, placing an active dog where she is home alone for 8-12 hours a day will not likely end well.
Surrendering your pet to a shelter
If you are not able to find a home on your own, surrendering your pet to a humane society, animal rescue, or municipal animal shelter is a viable option. In fact, many adoption contracts require you to return pets to them rather than have you rehome on your own.
When you contact your shelter, ask if they have any programs to prevent relinquishment. If you are rehoming due to short-term financial hardship, the shelter may have temporary support available to help you keep your pet. And many animal welfare organizations have training resources if behavior issues are the reason you are thinking about giving up your pet.
Consider each organization’s surrender and adoption policies before you give up your dog or cat. Find out if they partner with other organizations to increase the adoption potential of the animals in their care.
If surrender is not an option – for example, the shelter is at capacity – ask if they allow courtesy posts. These can give your pet additional exposure to potential adopters.
The myth of “no kill” versus “kill” shelters
Most shelters are open-admission, meaning they take all incoming animals. When they run out of space or funding, most euthanize animals to make room for new arrivals.
This is done only if they are unable to transport to other rescue groups, earning the unfortunate name “kill” shelter.
No animal welfare professional wants to kill animals. However, shelters must abide by safe and legal limits about the number of animals they are permitted to have in their care.
Heartbreaking, life-and-death decisions need to be made when shelters must take all incoming animals.
Older pets, large breed dogs, and animals with special needs, behavioral issues, injuries, or illnesses are the first to die when a shelter reaches capacity. In some cases, an incoming animal might have as little as three days to be adopted or put to death.
No shelter wants to kill animals, but when the supply of available adopters is outpaced by the shelter’s capacity to house and care for homeless pets in its community in a safe and legal manner euthanasia is typically the result. This is equally the case if transports to shelters that have capacity are not available.
Other organizations are limited-admission, meaning they only take in the number and type of animals they can rehome, and do not euthanize for space. These are often referred to as “no-kill” shelters, but the label is misleading.
The vast majority of shelter staff are not “pro-kill,” but often lack the means to humanely manage the velocity of incoming pets. And even no-kill shelters euthanize animals deemed unadoptable due to illness, aggression or other factors.
Still others keep pets for months or even years; some are effectively “never kill.” This in itself can be inhumane because a shelter is a refuge, not a home. And animals deteriorate in as little as a few weeks in even the best shelter environments.
Breed rescues – an option for mixed breeds/mutts as well
Finally, explore breed-specific rescues. Because they are less common than all-breed animal welfare organizations you may need to search outside of your community or municipality.
Even if your pet is not a purebred, many breed rescues are open to mixes of the breeds in which they specialize. In most cases, breed-specific rescues are foster-based. This means that if your pet is accepted, she will live in an approved foster family’s home until she is adopted.
If you must surrender your pet, research what facilities are available in your area. Consider search terms like humane society, animal rescue, animal shelter.
Ask about the process for accepting owner-surrendered pets. Surrender fees and wait lists may apply – and some shelters do not have capacity to accept owned animals. Find out about their efforts to care for and re-home pets in their custody, and their policy on euthanasia.
When surrendering your pet, offer the photo and history described above to facilitate efforts to find your pet his next home.
Giving up a beloved dog or cat is difficult. A little research and preparation may save you some heartache and lead your pet to a loving, caring forever home. We wish you every success if you are faced with this decision.
If you are serving in the military and are considering re-homing your pet due to PCS orders, read our blog post about PCS and your pet.
Your article was so helpful. My son owns Lady, a Pit Bull that is as smart as most humans. He has to give her up. Pray I can find her a good home. She is so loyal.
My son has a very sweet 11 month old lab/terrier mix. He is neutered and a good boy. He has all his shot . My son is single and works from home and feels
Bad that he isn’t able to give the dog all the attention he would love. Pets for patriots sounds like a great organization for this dog to get the life he truly deserves.
Thankyou for the article, it was very interesting and insightful. I am in the process of adopting out my beautiful British bulldog girl. I dont want to let her go but I have no choice due to health problems. The information contained in your article is going to help me hugely. Thankyou again.
Susan, our blog is not a forum to responsibly rehome your pet. Please refer to the article for suggestions, including signing up with GetYourPet.com. Thank you.
3 yr old red heeler – INSIDE dog.
Loves to run! Muscular- About 30#. All shots up to date except kennel cough. A little timid at first. Have to rehome because we are moving into a “one pet” community. We already have a service dog.
Neutered and has chip. Can be somewhat destructive if left alone for over 5 hrs, therefore crate is good idea when you have to be gone.
I’m very glad I found this article. In December I rescued a toy Chihuahua from a shelter. But the man I’m renting from went out of his way to get a HUGE dog the night before I was picking my dog up. His tremendous nasty dog thinks and acts like my dog is a chew toy and my landlord does absolutely nothing about it! Now I have come to realize that I need to re-home my dog. He does not deserve to be treated so badly! He’s such a loving tiny dog.
Thank you for some great tips!
Hi Savannah,
You commented on our blog post about rehoming pets and asked us to call you on Friday night. This is not something we do; our article simply has suggestions for people on how to responsibly rehome their pets when they are unable to keep them.
If you have any questions please send them in reply to this email. Thank you.
Pets for Patriots
can you give us a call next friday night an 207xxxxxxx
Hi P4P,
You’re right – a little research and preparation really makes a big difference.
It’s good that you wrote about this and explained it. I doubt that the majority know the difference between a government funded public shelter and a private rescue group. They probably haven’t thought much about “kill” vs. “no kill” because they assume euthanasia won’t happen.
The Craigslist bit your wrote really turned my gut but I am grateful that you brought it up and explained it. It’s not like a person rehoming their pet is trying to sell an old stove or boat. An important sentient life is involved.
Great tip regarding taking a quality picture, providing a description and bio with any needs a pet has. That would help ensure that a cat gets a cat parent that will be a good fit and see to their extra needs.
I hadn’t thought of breeders taking in a mix. That’s nice to know.
Thanx,
=^-^= Hairless Cat Girl =^-^=
“Limited Admission” does not necessarily mean “no-kill,” and many open admission shelters do achieve 90% live outcomes. It is VERY important to understand not only what the shelter / rescue’s euthanasia policy is, but also what pets they COULD take that they turn away. Municipal shelters that are supposed to be open admission sometimes turn away animals that citizens pay taxes to provide services for.
Create a Facebook page like this one for an adoptable pet, http://www.facebook.com/MailboxKittyNeedsAHome. That makes it easy for everyone you know to circulate/access information about the pet. (P.S. The foster family fell so in love with Archie they kept him! But the webpage is incredibly cute and we all still fallow little Archie’s adventures.)
Excellent article, thank you! One point you made and that I’d like to emphasize is that shelters aren’t just a “last ditch” option. Many shelters network with rescues and other shelters and often keep “waiting lists” of people waiting for specific breeds (or colors), so contacting them early in the process might help place the pet(s) with less stress for everyone concerned.