You’ve decided to add a new 4 legged member to your family and are searching rescues to find your dream dog! Here are some insider tips on how to be the kind of applicant that every rescue dreams of hearing from vs. being the one that makes people who process applications call each other and go OMG YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE THIS ONE. Here’s how to not be the “OMG” person….
- Remember Everyone Is A Volunteer. – This is a labor of love for all of us- none of us are getting paid. As much as it may seem differently, we do not have a call center full of Becki, the Time Life Operator’s to answer questions, or an office full of paid staff running the operations. We do this above and beyond our professional work that pays the bills. We do this 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We do our rescue work late at night, early in the morning, under the desk at work, in the car, in the bathroom, and at the expense of our families, friends, personal time, personal dogs, housekeeping, and overall sanity. I returned a call from a donor once on a Saturday and the gentleman on the other end, said that he was very impressed our office was staffed on Saturday’s. I let him know that if by office, he meant my car, and by staffed, he meant me sitting in the parking lot outside the grocery store returning his call while my frozen foods melted, then heck yes we were staffed on Saturday 🙂 His mind was blown and he said he literally thought we had a 100% paid team.
- Be Nice – Not only is this superb advice for life in general, but it applies for rescue as well. You catch more flies with honey. Be pleasant, be friendly, be open to the process and things will go much smoother. (…and you may even get some special treatment along the way!)
- Make Sure Your Medical Is Up To Date And Everyone In Your House Is Spayed/Neutered. Rescuers spend a great deal of their time raising funds to treat conditions that are 100% preventable. Witnessing ulcerated mammary tumors first hand makes you darn passionate about spay/neuter. Loving a dog through a long and painful heartworm treatment doesn’t give us the warm fuzzies to adopt them out to a family who doesn’t understand the importance of heartworm preventatives or doesn’t test annually. We all are not always spot on for getting those vaccines RIGHT when they are due, but any reputable rescue will check vetting records to look for consistent annual vetting and if, for any reason, you haven’t done that, your application won’t fly. Check your records before applying and if you have missed something, get in to see your vet, get up to date, and let the person you are working with know that you have done so. You will be that rare unicorn that utilizes cognitive thinking skills and takes action to achieve your goals! (Disclaimer – This thought process works for something that was overlooked in an otherwise consistent vetting history….if your dog hasn’t been to the vet in 5 years, one round of vaccines and a heart worm test does not an awesome pet parent make.)
- Read All The Words – Chances are the question you have about the rescue, its process, fees, what is included, age requirements, etc has been answered on the website. Rescue’s get SO many emails each day and 95% of them can be answered by looking on the website and reading the words that are there. Be that awesome person who looks for the answer instead of lobbing it over to a volunteer who is already caring for more dogs than they would care to admit to to answer for the 60th time today, how much the adoption of a dog is. If, for some reason, you have looked at the website and can’t find the answer, it goes a long way to mention that in any communications – “I have looked on your website and can’t seem to find the answer for X – would you be able to direct me to where I can find it or help me to answer my question” goes a long way to making yourself stand out from the crowd!
- Trust The Process – At any given time, a reputable rescue can be working with multiple families who are anxious to adopt. There will likely be steps along the way that make you go “why the heck are they doing it this way” or “this makes no sense” or even “these people are bat shit crazy”. All rescuers have learned painful lessons from the school of hard knocks. If a part of the process strikes you as “bat shit crazy” there is likely a legitimate reason for it. Feel free to ask why something is done that way and you will likely get a wild story of some crazy thing that happened that something has to be done some ultra specific way to ensure that insane thing never happens again. (This could also earn you bonus points as rescuers LOVE people who ask good questions that give them a reason to talk about the process)
- Communication Faux Paus – Expanding a bit on some of the points above. Being an awesome communicator will help your adoption process go much smoother and faster.
- We can’t call you to answer questions– We get lots of emails that say “please call me at xxx-xxxx”. As much as we would love to do that, we can’t. Please let us know what your question is and we can get it to the right volunteer to be able to help you!
- Don’t send the same question through regular email, website email, FB DM and IG DM – This happens more frequently than you think that rescuers receive the same question from the same person up to 5x at the same time from five different locations. This is one of the many things that make rescuers drink. Asking the same question 5 times in 5 locations will not help you get your question answered faster. It will make a rescuer think you are crazy and do not understand the process, and most importantly are not aware that you are bogging the system down for managing the same question in 5 locations.
- Do be considerate of time when texting – This is another one that applies to life in general and is symptomatic of our society in general (but that is a different conversation for another day!). Texting a rescuer at 7AM or 11 PM will not do you any favors. If you need to get something out of your head at a crazy hour, e-mail is great and will likely get you an answer faster as most rescuers check their email first thing in the morning. If you wake a rescuer up at some ungodly hour with a text, chances are the result will not be the one you are looking for.
- Be Patient – We know that days seem like weeks when you have seen your dream dog on line and from the rescue’s social media feed, everyone is getting to adopt a dog, but you! Keep in mind that many of the people you see in the “happily ever after” photos have had their applications in and gone through the exact same process you are going through now. Also, be extra patient if you see the dog you had your heart set on get adopted. Many rescues receive some horrid emails from people who submit an application and then lose their minds when “their dog” is adopted by someone else. Rescuers are big believers in “the dog chooses the person” and if your dream dog gets adopted, the rescue can guide you to a perfect match that you might not have even considered.
- Open Your Heart Further – Any rescuer can tell you that all the applications come flooding in for puppies and the young, pretty dogs. These lucky souls are the holy grail of rescue dogs and have people literally fighting to adopt them. For us, the true magic of rescue, can be found in the dogs many would otherwise pass over – the seniors, the blind, the deaf, the “differently abled”, those with daily medical needs. Many times, these are the sweetest, most loving dogs you could ever hope to meet and truly know that they have been given a 2nd chance. Nothing makes a rescuer happier than receiving in inquiry or application for one of our (and we hate these words) “less adoptable dogs”. If you might shy away from a dog with a specific condition, even if you literally know nothing about how to care for a dog with a hearing loss/vision loss/3 legs/cart dog/diabetic dog/ect, any good rescue will bend over backwards to teach and empower you to do be able to care for that dog. If you are looking to adopt, we challenge you to open your heart a bit further and be the kind of person we dream of to choose one of the special dogs we all love so much.
