No one wants to turn down an animal.
Yet refusing to take an animal is as much a part of rescue as is fostering others. It's a necessity required by limits on time, money, and space, as well as the desire to fully care for the animals already being fostered.
"You do what you can do, and you can't do any more," Ms. Kane said. "You've got to live your life.
When to say "when"
For each rescuer, the amount of manageable fosters varies according to space at home and other commitments. Not everyone learns immediately how to deal. "It's definitely a problem," said Barbara Lipson, president of the Northern Virginia-based 4 Paws Rescue Team. "There are so many homeless animals out there, and people in this kind of work have big hearts to begin with, and it's real hard to turn down an animal in need."
The people who get in the most trouble fall into two categories: newcomers to the rescue business who don't yet know where to draw the line, and private rescuers who have a hard time saying no, Ms. Lipson said.
New rescuers, full of enthusiasm and raring to go, often start by handing out their home numbers, she said. "There's a snowball effect. It's hard to say 'no' when someone calls you at home and tells you about a cat they found in the gutter. And before you know it, it's gotten to be too much, and you've got all these cats, and then they all get upper respiratory infection, and you're applying ointment and giving them medication twice a day ... "
The private cat rescuers can find themselves in similar situations. "They take on too much because they're out there and see all the problems," Ms. Lipson said. In addition, many become involved in rescue because of their trap-and-release work with feral colonies on their properties. If passers-by notice that stray cats are being fed there, they start dumping their unwanted pets on their doorstep.
It's a common problem across the pet spectrum. Rescuers will often find unwanted pets -- dogs and cats -- dumped on their property. Unwanted pets are abandoned in even the pet stores where rescues hold shows or display their available animals.
You can caution new rescuers about the danger of overextending themselves, but the warnings are rarely heeded at first, Ms. Lipson said. "[You] can tell them all you want, but until they've experienced that, they can't know."
It doesn't take much for even a reasonable situation to go bad. One inexperienced volunteer offered to take in a mother and her litter of kittens. Four Paws had two mothers with new litters, and gave the healthiest one to the inexperienced volunteer.
Three days after she arrived at the volunteer's home, the mother stopped nursing. Her five kittens stopped eating. Then the mother caught a cold.
In that case, the entire family -- the volunteer, her husband and two teenage children pitched in with the effort. They bottle-fed the kittens, which had to eat every three hours. Kittens at that age don't relieve themselves without being stimulated, so after each feeding, they'd do that with wet towels. The kittens caught their mother's cold, and everyone had to be periodically medicated. Ms. Lipson visited occasionally to help and encourage, and to try to force feed the mother, who eventually required veterinary assistance and had to be fed with a tube.
At this point, the mother and kittens are thriving, she said. But the family had conducted a pitched effort to salvage the situation after it tumbled unexpectedly downhill. Not every rescuer has the backup to deal with such emergencies so successfully.
Kathleen Kinnier, president of German Shepherd Rescue of Maryland, Lanham, Md., has taken animals away from volunteers who couldn't handle them -- for example, one volunteer who came to an adoption show with an uncontrollable foster dog. She lacked the time to train it.
"That's one of the biggest insults to a foster home," Ms. Kinnier said. "You don't want to see yourself as a failure or that you failed a dog."
But the perception is wrong -- it's not an insult, she said. Some people just can't handle certain dogs, and some animals require more work than others. "The biggest thing is knowing your limits before you take on a dog."
The main thing rescuers need to consider is whether they can take in another animal and still devote enough time to the animals they already have. Ms. Kinnier released one volunteer who, though dedicated to animals, wanted to do more than she realistically could. She had two dogs of her own, and was fostering four others. She arranged it by keeping them in crates in her unfurnished basement.
"They might as well have been in a kennel," Ms. Kinnier said. "I wasn't comfortable with them living in crates in the basement. I think she's got one of the biggest hearts, but she always wanted to save more."
One of the main goals of fostering is to accustom the dogs to living with people again, to train them and turn them into adoptable pets -- and that can't happen if the rescuer's attention is divided between too many animals, Ms. Kinnier said.Having too many animals also encourages burnout, which negatively affects both the foster parents and the dogs.
The tired rescuer will be less careful about who he or she allows to adopt the dog. "You lose focus," Ms. Kinnier said. "Some fosters try to push the dog off as soon as possible. That's what happens when you have too many dogs for too long. All you want to do is get those dogs placed."
But people will continue to push their limits because they know what happens if they don't take a dog in, or because, for some, it becomes a matter of pride.
"When it
becomes more about ego than about dogs, that's when we let volunteers know that maybe there's something else they need to do," Ms. Kinnier said.t "I've had to tell people before: 'No more.' "
Citing a recent case of animal hoarding, she wonders if perhaps that's what happens to people who end up with hundreds of neglected animals in their homes. "You keep going and going and think you can do more and better, and it becomes more about that than about the dogs. Maybe it was [the hoarder's] way of feeling he accomplished something."
The hoarding issue
Hoarding, in which a person takes in so many animals that their homes are destroyed and the animals themselves neglected, is a sensitive issue in the rescue community, said Gary Patronek, VMD, Ph.D., director of the Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy and project coordinator of the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium.
Numerous rescuers have communicated with the consortium about hoarding, but quietly, he said.
"It's so sensitive they can't raise it without being ostracized from the group. If they do, they're no longer part of the club."Hoarding isn't recognized as a mental illness. No one in the psychological community has attached a diagnosis to it. Yet many of the cases have co-existed with mental health problems. Delusion, dementia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and addiction have all been suggested as possible root causes of hoarding.
People with hoarding tendencies may gravitate toward rescue work because of the access to animals, or they may develop the problem over time. It's probably a bit of both, Dr. Patronek said.
Some hoarders will identify themselves as a rescue, going as far as to apply for and receive non-profit status.Before the Arizona Humane Society stopped examining animal cruelty complaints two years ago, it performed around 3,000 investigations a year.
In 30 to 50 percent of the hoarding cases, the collector was associated with either a rescue or a "so-called rescue," said Frank Corvino, field operations manager. "Most had latched onto a group, or a group had latched onto them."
Often there was a group mentality, he said -- if one home associated with the rescue involved hoarding, others within that rescue frequently did as well.Such situations are a far cry from what people think of when they hear "rescue." Cases are usually reported by the neighbors, who notice the stench leaking from the house -- the animals are usually out of sight.
Having too many animals also encourages burnout, which negatively affects both the foster parents and the dogs.
"They always say, 'I've been sick the last couple of weeks and it got out of hand,' when in reality it's been years," Mr. Corvino said.
The difference between a legitimate rescue and a hoarding situation is fairly easy to identify. It's not a matter of large numbers of animals. "I've gone out to places where there were literally 100 to 150 animals, and they're all cared for and they're able to take care of the situation," Mr. Corvino said.
Sometimes a rescuer actually has allowed his or her work to get out of control. But that person will accept help. "If you go out and interview that person, they're reasonable about it and admit it," he said. "They're looking for help, looking for a way to deal with it."
A hoarder, on the other hand, will deny that there's a problem, Mr. Corvino said. Hoarders will come up with countless excuses to resist giving up an animal: this one is sick and I'm treating it, this is my favorite, I'll give these to you in a few weeks, after I'm sure they're healthy.
"They always justify what they're doing, and that's the problem. They can't think about letting an animal go."
Dr. Patronek offers a similar rule of thumb. "Legitimate rescues know when animals' needs are being compromised and know to stop," he said. "[The question] is whether this is what the animal needs or what the person needs."Rescues -- despite the reported reticence in talking about collectors -- were candid in addressing the issue of hoarding. Everyone said they'd heard of cases, and that they take at least some precautions to avoid the situation themselves.Most said they try to screen their rescuers just as they screen their adopters. Charisse Powell, director of Siamese Rescue of Kansas, Topeka, Kan., requires a home visit before taking on a new volunteer, and has the foster families keep in close contact with one another. "I don't have anyone who's isolated," she said.Rescues also keep an eye out for situations where volunteers show an unwillingness to place the animal. "We don't work with people who aren't willing to place the cat, so we won't facilitate that," Ms. Lipson said. "We wouldn't be what they're looking for, because we're placing cats." Four Paws will help private rescuers out with veterinary care, but only if they're working to place the animals. Mr. Corvino recommends that rescue groups conduct home visits to foster homes at least twice a year
Keeping control
Rescues quickly develop rules geared toward keeping volunteers from taking on too much. German Shepherd Rescue requires volunteers to take one to two week breaks between dogs. "You see 'em burn out if you don't," Ms. Kinnier said.Ms. Kane used to wonder about breed-specific rescue groups. "How can you pick and choose? But you learn early on that you've got to start narrowing it down," she said. "After the first year or two, you realize you can't do it all."So Pocono Pet Rescue in Tobyhanna, Pa., focuses primarily on small, elderly, or sick dogs. Siamese Rescue of Kansas deals with -- obviously -- Siamese cats.
And most rescues assign priority as a way to narrow the chaotic flood of animals down to a small stream. Many give open spaces first to animals already at shelters, about to be euthanized. Animals that are outside in danger or in dangerous home situations are also given high priority. People who call because they've taken in a stray or want to give up their own cat are urged to continue caring for the animal themselves while the rescue seeks a home. After a while, rescuers are able to harden themselves somewhat to turning people down. It remains painful, but it's unavoidable, they said. "You focus on the cats in your care, and not the ones you can't take," Ms. Powell said. "You have to say no, but there's always the next one you can help. And if you don't say no, you won't have the energy to help the next one."
Oreo thought this was worth a Share, sorry we don't know who wrote it or when, but it wears well.Pictured is a young Aussie residing at
Washoe County Regional Animal Services at the time of this posting.....
