Where to Adopt a Pet or Find a New Home for Your Pet

(Original Title: Dangers of Giving Away a Pet on Craigslist or Another Site?)

I actually don't have a pet to give away, but someone spammed me this morning with a long pet protection guidelines email and one of the tips listed was to never give away a pet on Craigslist or some other public listing service. It claimed that 70% of people who adopt pets that away have sinister intentions for your pet. Is this warning for real? I'm sure there are bastards like this, but 70%?

Here's the full text from from the email I got:

QUOTE

If in circumstances of last resort you decide to post a listing on craigslist to give your pet away, consider the fact that 70% of those you get responses from will NOT BE with good intentions, even if they sound and look like the nicest and most trustworthy folks on the planet, they are professionals and know what unsuspecting owners want to see. Once they have your pet because you trusted them when they brought \\"their\\" 10 year old kid with them, your pet will very likely end up being used as live bait for dog fight training, or sold to labs for scientific experiments, and you will never know, you will just hope for the best and want to believe you did the right thing. So think very carefully before even deciding to make that listing, you might just decide you should make every attempt possible to keep your pet with you after all even if it does soil that nice new carpet a few times a day, you are better of investing a few bucks and taking your pet to a pet behavior specialist which will almost always solve the problem behavior of your pet.

While nailing down the absolutes of what happens to pets that are given away through the likes of Craigslist, the want ads, etc, the fact of the matter is that, under such circumstances, the individual giving up the pet really has no idea as to what kind of environment the pet is going.

With this in mind, I'll take this opportunity to plug your local Humane Society. The HS requires that you fill out a level of paperwork that is almost equivalent to applying for a job and they also require a nominal fee (less than $100) to place the pet into a new home. This fee includes initial liscense (if a dog doesn't have a licesnce, is it still a dog?), shots, spay/neutering and a discount towards an initial veterinary checkup.

Having to go through all of this helps insure that the pet is going to a reasonably good home and also filters out ner-do-wells looking to get an animial for free and treat it in who-knows what manner.

We've had three HS rescue dogs in our home (two have passed on) and have been very pleased with all of them.

If you have to give up a pet, please consider the HS as your first option.

Larry

Indeed. But if your pet has health issues and needs treatment you know of, or your pet has been exposed to a contagious disease, consider one of the private rescue groups- you can find them very locally through petfinder.org. HS because of it's space and volume cannot take some special needs or exposed-to-disease pets.

Regarding a pet with special needs of any kind, particularly an older pet, it might be time to face the difficult reality of having the animal humanely euthanized.

I don't mention this glibly, having endured a month of provided extensive (and expensive) care to a dog with pancreatic cancer and, as always happens with a pet, losing in the end.

There's almost always a point in time as a pet parent where there's not a happy ending and that reality has be reasonably accommodated.

Larry

I think it's always good to try and place pets with someone you know, or through a reputable organization.

I'm involved in California Chinchillas, based out of Menlo Park. It's a chinchilla rescue. You might not think there would be a demand for a chinchilla rescue, but we usually have at least a dozen looking for homes at any given time, as well as others living in foster homes that need extra TLC before being ready to be adopted.

The website is www.chinchillarescue.org

QUOTE (Sheldon @ Aug 28 2006, 04:16 AM)

I actually don't have a pet to give away, but someone spammed me this morning with a long pet protection guidelines email...

Why in the world are you reading spam?!?

HyperC, thanks for posting the chinchilla rescue site! That's really cool!

It looks a little like the parrot/cockatiel rescue organization I like a lot, http://mickaboo.com

And along the same lines is http://www.rabbit.org, which is the site for the House Rabbit Society. Although I just adopted a bunny from HSSV.