What about Home Visits?
What about Home Visits?
Here’s a great article “Those darn dog rescues with all of their rules and questions – what gives?” written by Penny Eims, is a real eye-opener, and prompted me to write this post.
Home visits slow down the adoption process, sometimes by several months. One local rescue is behind in approving applications by four months waiting on home visits to be completed. I can only imagine how many dogs are being euthanized in a four month period of time, waiting for their dogs to be adopted. Here’s a great story, written by Cyndy Doty that explains why we don’t play God, and it explains it all!
My Home Visit, by Cyndy Doty
This is my home which sits on six acres in Ocala. Yes, there is a point to this story and a bit of humor!
When we were lucky enough to purchase this home, we thought with six acres why not foster a few dogs, right? We put the word out to a few organizations of our interest and waited. Let me say at this point, it was about four months before any group contacted us. Must be because there were no dogs to rescue and they all had furever homes, right again?
One glorious day an Aussie rescue called us to foster, but of course we had to have a home inspection, OK fine with us. The woman scheduled the day and we were very excited! An hour before she was supposed to visit us she canceled. NO reason was given. We thought, great maybe the dog was adopted! NOPE, a week later she called and told us she was in the “neighborhood ( I’m sure)” and could she stop by. I was on my way to carpool, but asked a friend to pick up my son, not wanting to miss this opportunity.
About an hour later, a woman came to my gate to be buzzed in. Let me stop at this point and say I use the term “woman” loosely! A creature with greasy hair, fingernails with so much dirt they could grow vegetable gardens in them, I am only guessing at this, but maybe eight or nine teeth (all towards the back) I dare not get that close, a filthy stretch tank top in HOT pink and stretch shorts which I could not tell the color under the holes and dirt. You have a vision yet? Well, she walked all around the house, checked my other dogs out, called my Cavalier King Charles “a cute little beagle”, walked out to the back three acres and said, “not so sure about that back fence!” She gathered up all our vet records and told me she would get back to me!
A few weeks passed and we had not heard a word. Seriously, I was so nervous and upset. What could we have done wrong to not get “approved”? Finally, we got a call that we were approved and could come pick up the dog she had told us about nearly two months ago! We did not know what to expect. We got directions and drove to pick up the Aussie the next day.
When we finally found this place, I told Ed this can’t possibly be the right place! After driving up a flooded dirt path we came upon a broken down trailer on cinder blocks.  I said to Ed, “oh. she didn’t tell me it was a high rise!” The closer we got, we saw the back and the side of this trailer was a flooded mud pit, ahhhh a waterfront high rise! Listen, I am not being a SNOB really, but the conditions these animals were living was horrid! I am just mention this because of the scrutiny we were under before being “approved!” Mind you this was to foster, NOT adopt!
What we were about to see was something out of a nightmare! I would guess close to twenty five dogs, wet, muddy, feces everywhere, dirty water bowls and bugs in their food! We signed our papers all while holding our breath, picked up the poor dog and never looked back!
What we got was a tri colored Aussie, male, heartworm positive parasites and not neutered! After many hundreds of dollars of vet bills which we paid for and much love we were able to find a perfect home! Twenty six acres in North Carolina herding sheep!
Cyndy Doty
June 8, 2010
3 thoughts on “What about Home Visits?”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I think you take an unnecessarily high-horsed approach to deriding all home visits here – and you stereotype in a way that damages the good intentions of other shelters who do complete home visits the same day and who have discovered conditions on home visits which led to a refusal of adoption.
Again, if the shelter employee or volunteer who comes to your house is looking at your laundry or dishes or carpet – then they have zero experience with home visits and what they actually need to be concerned with (with respect to the health and safety of the dog that will be fostered or adopted).
If you’d like to know what a knowledgeable volunteer of a shelter would look for in a home visit, the following is only a very short subset:
– fully latching gates and doors
– weakness in outdoor fencing
– home hazards for the dog (both inside and outside)
– traffic level on the street in case the dog were to get out
Again, just a subset. At the same time it is an opportunity to talk to the family away from the shelter and other dogs (or away from the foster’s home and other dogs), interacting with just them in their environment and the dog they wish to keep.
I’m sorry you had a bad experience, but to speak out in this way against the concept of home visits is somewhat ignorant and fails to acknowledge the people who do things the right way as well as the benefits thereof.
Best wishes,
Melissa
the article was not written about shelters or pounds, it was written about rescues.
Dang Cyndy ! I hope you reported that Rescue !! I have done several home visits for different Breed Rescues, Maybe we need to check the on some of the Rescues lol !!!