ADOPTION FEES AND “RIGHTNESS”

Adoption fees are often a topic of conversation for me, be it with potential adopters, Internet trolls who are in need of their first good fight of the day, or simply folks inquiring. We post our range as $495 – $1000. How do we arrive at that? Age, health, medical costs, transport and boarding. There seems to be a thought process out in the world that us rescue folks do what we do for the money. We are simply vacationing and partying it up on the backs of innocent dogs.Nothing could be further from the truth in this rescue which is the only one for whom I can speak.

This rescue and those associated with it draw no salary or support from the rescue funds. We do not vacation. The banks own our cars. We start at 4:30 in the morning and I personally end my day between 10 and 12 pm when I am screening applications and answering emails. The rescue is based in my home in what was once my garage and intended to be my glass studio.

My fully fenced back yard now hosts 8 outdoor kennels. If anyone is up with sick or scared dogs, it is me. If a sick dog needs out of the kennel there is always room upstairs. I go to the dump 2-3 times per week, because someone has to. I transport dogs to the vet during the day because I am “retired.” I make runs to Pet Food Warehouse for thousands of dollars in premium food. We scrimp on nothing.

Karen and Jessica have full time jobs, yet are here every day at 5 a.m. and Karen back at 4, every day! We clean kennels and crates, bath and scoop more dog poop than one can imagine. My vacation consisted of contracting something akin to Coccidia from dog poop and being out of the kennel for 4 days or falling over a dog at the vet and cracking my kneecap and being out for 3 days. Now there are vacations to strive for!

I pull dogs almost exclusively from shelters that kill dogs. They are killed for illness, age, because they are owner-surrenders, or simply because space is needed for the next group of abandoned/neglected/abused dogs.

What are our costs?

1. Board $21-$40 per day per dog. Dogs must be out of the shelter for 10 days to transport. Do the math.

2. Vet-costs last year: over $50,000 combined including emergency vet visits.

3. Transport- minimum $175 per dog and the big dogs are $250 or more per dog.

And so, I ask, “Where is all this money that we are raking in?” Answer, there is none. We are over $20,000 in debt at any given time. This is not because we are financially irresponsible, quite the opposite. Our personal finances are tight ships and attended to like a newborn baby. I do not come from money or privilege. I have been poor. I know how that feels. We carry that debt because when Bruzer became ill we had a responsibility to care for him until such time as it was deemed hopeless. We posted his need, asked, explained and begged. We got little help. $5000 later and on the credit card I said goodbye to him having kept our promise to him.

When out pint sized Terrier Chewy became ill with pneumonia we did what we obligated to do, get him well. Chewy is now in a wonderful home in Maine and we still carry the $7000 in debt for his treatment. When we posted last week about little Penney the English Bull Terrier whom I pulled from the shelter, (who was shot in the face with buckshot, developed kennel cough twice and was exposed to Parvo), needing help, our goal was $800 to help, not cover her care. We did not receive a donation. Penney had her surgery and treatment and quarantine board. I could go on ad nauseam about one case after another but won’t.

Then there are occasions that present themselves where we get a young dog, a purebred dog, a healthy dog and a social dog. I will put a higher adoption fee on that dog because it is fair. It can also help put something toward the debt. There have been times where I have made the decision to exchange money to get a dog out of where they are at.

I remember a small Old English Bulldog, Bella, who was in a drug house in Michigan. Did the $200 that we gave go to that woman’s drugs? Most likely. Is that wrong? I guess it depends. From my vantage point the dog was taken out of hell and saved and given a chance at a life. There have been times when a dog was being sold on the Internet intact which means that it will become someone’s breeding dog/meal ticket. These folks typically do not surrender to rescues. However if I can see that I can negotiate them down and get the dog safe/altered and out of harms way, I will do it. This is when I often start hearing the questions about “right” and “wrong”. Well let me tell you, there is so much glaringly wrong in the world that my little corner pales in comparison.

What is right? Is it waiting for that dog to be sold for a profit, bred nearly to death, neglected, possibly abused and dumped at the local shelter for me to pull after the fact? Is it “right” for us to go further in debt to save that dog and try to undo the trauma that it experienced? Perhaps if you are following some Machiavellian way of thinking that in so doing we somehow come out dusted in gold……not the case.

Do shelters perpetuate the problem by taking in dogs at all? Absolutely! They are the funnel through which the breeders excess, the puppy mill rejects, the abused and thrown away dogs pass if they live long enough. There is not a day when every reputable rescue person does not grab there hair (what is left of it) and ask if there is an end to this madness? The answer is a resounding NO! We are all complicit in the process at some level. That is not by intent, but simply by not turning a blind eye. And so if I have an opportunity to shift the trajectory of a dog from a life of breeding or worse into one of a loving home and I choose to exchange some money for that, I may. Not always, but I may. Will that be factored into the adoption fee? Absolutely.

If a person feels that doing so compromises the integrity of my doing rescue work I would say this; There is no glory in pulling 4 senior Pekingese from the home of a dead hoarder and knowing that they are headed to death themselves because, “No one will want them.” There is no glory in picking up an emaciated English Bulldog who is a skeleton because he suffers from Megaesophogus and has been barfing every bite of food that he inhales for two years. There was no resolution in either of those cases except that we saved those two dogs. We spent collectively $8000 doing so with little assistance.Will us taking those dogs stop the abuse from happening again? No I am guessing that the thinking is in one case we were clearly the saviors and in the other of exchanging cash for a dog, we were somehow benefiting.

I will not budge on my thinking or my actions short of being illegal. We do not function as a public shelter who has municipal or government funding. Those employees do not go home at night and wonder what happens if the shelter folds. We do.I believe that I have thoughtfulness and integrity in the choices that I make in lfe for the rescue and myself. That does not mean that everyone will agree with me and that is ok. I can however justify on paper why we set an adoption fee where it is and I am comfortable with that. I also respect if a person can not afford the dog. Where I part ways is when someone chooses a dog with a $1000 adoption fee, offers us less than half of that and tells me that the balance of the money will be spent to purchase supplies and necessary equipment. My answer is, who will pay of credit card bill, buy our food, pay our vets? How is that “right”.