Every vet hospital has plenty opportunity to turn its unused cages into Adoption Central. I mean, why not give back to the community by using surplus space, material and staff time to place as many pets as possible?
It’s a goodwill gesture that makes staff happy, gives your clients cause to know how much you really care about animals and puts a huge smile on your face when your matchmaking efforts actually pay off.
At our hospital we place about one abandoned or stray pet every couple of weeks. Just yesterday our beloved Shakira (a small breed, eight-week pup someone dumped on our doorstep) went to her new home. Pretty, tiny, young and vivacious as her namesake, that one was easy to place—she lasted barely over a week before being snapped up.
Dumpings are one thing—you have to take ‘em. If they’re small we keep them in house. If they’re large and adoptable, we foster them at home (I take in about one a year, on average). If they’re absolutely unadoptable (very ill, aggressive, etc.) we call Animal Services…and everyone cries when they get picked up… Most, however, are easy enough to take on.
Adoptions of the abandoned are one thing…but sign-overs are another can of worms altogether.
Sign-overs occur when clients bring you pets they can no longer care for or whose treatment they cannot afford. Hospitals have the option of drafting a document that allows us to take over ownership of the pet to do as we like with them.
In these cases we’re free to treat them, take them home, give them away or euthanize them if we can’t alleviate their suffering or cure their disease. They belong to us now.
Though sign-overs are a humane option for placeable, treatable pets, lately it’s been getting to be harder for vet hospitals to do without cracking open that proverbial box of wigglies.
Vet hospitals all over the country have increasingly been treated to high-profile cases of supposed veterinary malfeasance when they take on this legal maneuver on a pets’ behalf.
Here’s a scenario: A dog is riddled with fleas, requiring a transfusion (or three) to nurse him back to health. The owners can’t afford it so they agree to sign him over to the hospital.
A week later the dog is living with a technician who fell in love with him. She paid for the basic materials for his care, her own dog provided blood for the transfusions and she’s in love with her new baby whose life she helped save.
Meanwhile, the previous owners have come back to the hospital saying they’ve changed their minds. The tech doesn’t want to give up the dog. He was poorly cared for by them. She’s offering an infinitely better home and she knows it. Her stance is etched in stainless steel. She’s willing to risk her job over it.
But the former owners are unrelenting. They call the local TV news and next thing you know the story’s out that X hospital steals dogs from their clients. Your clients make the phone ring off the hook, perhaps wondering how you, their vet, could have become so cruel when you’ve always been so caring…
A myriad of variations on this theme exist, some of them less exculpatory of the veterinarian than I’ve presented here, but most describe a situation where the vet was just trying to help the animal. Check out this recent story. And this one.
So it was that when a three year-old Dachshund come in last Wednesday, down in the rear with no deep pain (for over a week!), I’d had to fight with myself over having her signed over.
I didn’t know these people. They might change their minds next week and want her back. And I didn’t know whether she’d ever walk or not. So I gave up the battle by resigning myself to the euthanasia the owners had decided upon.
In a less contentious, less legalistic world I’d have taken on her care, as I did for another Dachshund four or five years back in almost the same exact condition. Those owners never called again. But it always worried me that they would and that the new home he’d gone to would suffer the separation and the knowledge that he’d had to return to a lesser home. Or that I’d be accused of having stolen him, forged their signatures, whatever…
It’s in these cases that veterinarians and hospital managers have been forced to adopt policies against sign-overs. The abandoned are hard enough to deal with and that’s where we should expend our energies. Sign-overs often simply serve to prove the axiom: No good deed ever goes unpunished.
|
And of course, make it perfectly clear that they will under no circumstances get the pet back.
However, we tried to strike balance by refusing to euthanize a pet just because the owner can't or won't afford treatment. That doesn't mean we won't euthanize a pet that could be saved with thousands of dollars of diagnositics, treatments and months of rehabilitation...we understand that not everyone can or wants to spend $5000 on their pet that may or may not get well. But if the owner won't even pay for an xray and a splint for a broken leg, won't test for a UTI to rule out the possible cause for inappropriate elimination, or at least *try* to manage their pet's lameness with time and pain meds...then euthanasia will not happen.
Anyhow, she started calling the clinic. First she just wanted him back. Mind you, this is after she told us that she found out her live-in boyfriend fed the dog the blade wrapped up in meat. Then, she'd call drunk in the middle of the night saying we stole her dog. Exactly the story Dr. Patty is talking about. She called and called. It almost made my clinic have to change it's policy. I was in the same boat as Dr. Patty's tech - I'd have rather lost my job than give this animal back to her. I think the bosses might have had a tough decision if she'd actually made good on her threat to call the press. I've had the dog for a year and a half now and they tell me she just called again last week. (I've since moved out of state.)
I guess my point in all of this is, what was the alternative? Should we have let her take this dog home and try to pass a giant box-cutter blade through it's intestines? Would we have been liable in animal cruelty at that point? Should we have just euthanized a very 'fixable' dog just to avoid the headache? She signed all the appropriate papers and was talked to at length about how she would have no further rights to the dog, but obviously that didn't matter. We have to sleep at night, but we also have to have a bed to sleep in.
Its too bad that these types of people ruin it for others. I know if my animal had a treatable condition and I couldn't afford the treatment, I would be happy to sign him over to a new home.
Guess the other folks are the ones who would have told Solomon to cut the baby in half.
So what about a policy- you can have the pet back, but first all medical bills have to be paid in full. Also the person who now has the pet- you owe them for petsitting. If they didn't have the money for the surgery in the first place, they probably won't have it now. And at least the vet won't look like a bad guy...they will be offering the pet's return to the owners AFTER the bills have been paid. Which is totally reasonable.
granted maybe I would feel differently if your example wasn't a young dachshund. ( I have 4) Couldn't you have offered placement in dachshund rescue...I know of several doxie groups that specifically will take Doxies with back issues and have the surgery then rehome them. There are SO many better options than euthanasia because a client can't pay. And I don't mean to be critical here, but after reading both your blog and your article in Vet Economics, I can't help but feel that the spotlight is becoming more focused on income then on going the extra mile for the pet. Maybe that is just true of what you see in your area. I know some vets feel resentful that the rescue community has some alturistic expectations of them..but let's get real...it should be about the love of the animal, not about the bottom line. Somehow both manage to coexist very well for my vet, and others I know. Enough animals are already dying in shelters and on our streets, we hardly need to be so afraid of a little bad press that they are dying needless in vet's offices as well.
As far as sign-overs are concerned, I don't understand how it even becomes a media story to begin with...if the media did any fact-checking at all, you'd think all that would need to be done to end it would be to produce the signed form, end of story. Seems straightforward enough to me. although I know from experience it rarely is.
I am horrified that Anon was called by the previous owner even after she moved to another state - she never should have been told who had the dog.
But I guess a relinquishment in a vet office is more of a "duress" situation.
If animal shelters don't have the same issues with relinquishers, then why not?
If you can answer the question, then try to emulate whatever it is they are doing that makes a difference.
The suggestion of buying the animal for a buck makes sense.
It saved their lives. A tech took the lovebird (Oh, heaven forfend! Staff adopting give-ups!) and I drove the lop-eared bunny to a rescue (as I happened to be a client in the waiting area where the whole drama went down). The rescue found the bunny a super good home in about 24 hours. Yay for the bunny.
If clinic staff took on every needy animal, we'd be hoarders in a matter of months. Heaven forfend that people actually took responsibility for their own pets and avoided these situations altogether.
Friday, I spoke with an owner who had recently moved into city limits and was now bound by a two dog maximum (she has 3 dogs).
"Well, I guess I'll have to just euthanize one of them," she told me. I wanted to say, "Don't look at us! We *won't* be doing it."
Just a thought :)
just make sure the $1.00 is paid by check or CC.
I'm having a tough time thinking the media is hunger-crazed to viciously malign a totally "innocent" business looking to save & place an adoptable, fixable pet. If the former owners are lying, further investigation should reveal truth in descrepancy. Ok, maybe not "every" single time. Surely a court proceeding would (maybe I've watched too much court TV).
If a considerable part of "relinquishment documents" had to be hand-written by the owner, with specific details---again, I would think that was protection. And lastly, if this is soon to become a common problem, perhaps a neutral 3rd party (such as animal control, shelter, rescue group, etc. ) should take possession of the pet and agree to be its advocate.
I read an example like the above, and feel that I live in another country.