The Rescue Lied

THE RESCUE LIED

If you ever worked in a shelter or rescue environment, you have likely experienced something like this: you are scrolling through your Facebook feed, look at a post on some animal rehoming page, and see it. “The shelter lied to us, they said the dog was healthy”… “The rescue lied to us, they said the cat was litter box trained…” and on and on. If you are not involved with animal adoptions, you may have seen it and didn’t think much of it. Vet advice pages, animal training… whenever there’s talk of animal adoption, there’s also the constant plaint of being misled.

But for us, it lingers. I know I want to respond with “was the dog sick when you adopted it? You do realize that animals are living things that sometimes may develop health conditions?” “How often do you clean the litter box? Are there other animals in the house?” “Puppies regress in potty training in the new home, it’s very common!” “Some health conditions can be overlooked because no one tests every animal for every conceivable disease!”

But I don’t usually — defensiveness is not a good look, and mistakes do happen! Things get overlooked, everyone is full and broke, and shelter vets are notoriously overworked. I am writing this only to say: why do people immediately and automatically assume the worst of us? Animal advocacy is hard and heartbreaking work: we lose foster animals. We have to turn away from shelter animals timestamped for euthanasia because we have no space. There’s always too few foster homes, too little money, too much misery and too many cats. We go on because we care; we go on because we believe that saving these lives is important. When people trash rescuers as malicious liars who intentionally gave them a sick or anxious animal, it’s not the worst thing, but it is disheartening.

Sure, we want our fosters adopted. We also don’t want them returned — this is why we give the adopters their medical records, counsel them on their quirks and beg them to please call us if anything seems off. We want to help, we want them healthy and happy. Most importantly, we love them. And we ask of you — extend us the grace of assuming as much. And something unexpected happens with your adopted pet, remember that your cat or dog is not a lemon an unscrupulous car dealer foisted on you, but a living, breathing individual, who can be unpredictable. Oh, and that no one is in rescue to make a quick (or even slow!) buck.