It is never easy to give up a beloved pet, but sometimes we are faced with an impossible situation and we have to find a new home for the dog or cat.
But since you love the little one, you want to do the best, right? You don’t want to just dump it in a field or leave it in the yard hoping the neighbors will pick it up. This happens, but only rarely. More commonly, if they are left to roam, they are picked up by animal control and then euthanized. Few animal control agencies have the time and resources (or the desire) to make any effort to find them new homes.
Any rescue shelter can tell stories of pets found in yards, half-starved, if not already dead, and cats with horrific injuries, brought in by good-hearted people who found them. But the reality with these cases is that most die or have to be euthanized because they are too far gone to recover. Lacking the skills to survive on the streets or in the fields, they simply won’t make it on their own.
However, it’s hard to say which is worse: letting them go or advertising them as “free to a good home.”
A huge number of innocent animals… surplus kittens and puppies are usually… given away in parking lots and garage sales to what appear to be “good people”. But what most pet owners don’t know is that a large number of these people are part of an underworld of animal collectors, called Class B dealers, who collect and then sell animals to research laboratories. Colloquially, they are known as “bunkers”, because they obtain a “bunch” of animals to sell to traffickers in a quantity large enough to generate a good income.
These dealers have their own version of auctions and flea markets, where bundlers arrive with trailers and trucks full of cages full of shocked and miserable pets who have no idea what has just happened or is about to happen.
Meanwhile, as collectors await buyer events, conditions in their “kennels” are so horrible that many don’t even make it to the flea market. Beyond that, many do not reach the laboratories either. But for those who do, life doesn’t get any better.
If you advertise your pet in the newspaper or on the radio, do your own adoption work: ask for and check references, visit the new home to see if you want your cat or dog to live there, and tell the new owners you will. will visit later to make sure things are going well. Don’t just make a phone call… it’s too easy to lie about everything. Really nice people won’t mind the follow up. In fact, most are delighted to be in contact with you. If they are averse to this, it is definitely a red flag.
If you must move and can’t take your pet with you, and you don’t have immediate prospects for a new owner, call a shelter and make arrangements to receive your pet. And if no one can, then do everyone a favor by euthanizing an unwanted pet before it has to suffer.
Remember that having a pet comes with a degree of responsibility, and anyone who can’t handle that shouldn’t have a pet. Also, if you’re not moving unexpectedly, don’t expect a shelter to accept your pet that way, either.