If you have room in your home and in your heart for a new dog or cat, the Adoption Option makes sense for lots of reasons.

Key Benefits

• You will be saving a life.

• You will be saving money because adoption fees are less expensive than buying an animal from a pet shop or a breeder. Often, Guardian Angels donate all or part of the costs to assist families who can't quite afford the surgery.

• By adopting, you will reduce the demand that drives the commercial breeding of puppies and kittens. Each year, millions of healthy and well-behaved animals are destroyed in shelters and pounds simply because there are not enough homes for all of them. In our local shelter, that comes to about 12,000 dogs and cat each year!

• Puppies and kittens are cute, but they require lots of attention, training, patience and newspapers. By adopting a young adult or older pet, you can avoid many of the domestic hassles related to housebreaking, teething or the 5am crazy kitten syndrome.

• At least 25% of the shelter pets are purebred. Given enough time, every breed makes an appearance in the shelter.

• Many of the local vet clinics offer discounts on their services for adopted pets. Find out which vets in our area that participate in discount offers.

• Low Cost sterilization fees...the average fee for such surgery is quite expensive.

So, there are plenty of good reasons to adopt your next pet, but probably the best reason to adopt a dog or cat is that you might just meet your best friend.

A Few Important Points

Health. If you already have a dog or cat at home, be sure that your new pet has a clean bill of health from a  vet before exposing your other animals to any risk. This is particularly important if you adopt from a municipal pound or shelter where exposure to illness is common and veterinary care is usually minimal.

Spay/Neuter. If your new pet is not already fixed, please make sure that you arrange to have it spayed or neutered as soon as possible.

Children. A new pet in the house is an exciting event for youngsters. Don't let their enthusiasm turn into a nightmare for you or the new animal. Being pulled from under the bed by eager little hands or being flopped on by a child is very distressing to most animals and especially for those in unfamiliar surroundings. Their only recourse is to scratch, snap, or run. These natural responses are likely to land them back in the pound, which is hardly fair. Teach your children to respect animals as they would any other playmate. If their new pet doesn't want to play for now, leave it alone.

Behavior. While your new pet may turn out to be the perfect lady or gentleman from day one, it is more likely that he/she will take a little while to adjust to new surroundings and routines. Be patient. Be positive. Yelling or hitting an animal in order to correct unacceptable behavior is abusive and will only make matters worse. If kitty wants to hide under the bed for a few days until she feels safe, that's OK. Make sure she has food, water, and a litter tray.

Chewing, digging, separation anxiety, etc. are just as common in dogs that come with a fine pedigree from a pet store or breeder as they are in a mutt who's been rescued. Most behavior problems can be straightened out with patient and consistent application of a few simple training techniques.

Any of the following books can be of great help. But if there's a bigger problem, help is always available from a professional trainer or behaviorist.

• Get Rid of the Problem Not the Cat by Rod Cassidy, R.C. Enterprises
• Second-Hand Dog by Carol Lea Benjamin, Howell Book House Inc.
• The Chosen Puppy by Carol Lea Benjamin, Howell Book House Inc.
• Child-Proofing your Dog by Brian Kilcommons and Sarah Wilson, Warner Books

 Pricing

After you have given a new pet some serious thought and have decided that you definitely have the time, money and lifestyle to support a pet, please visit the animal shelter often to see the animals. We always have dogs and cats but occasionally we have other types of pets available such as reptiles, guinea pigs and other rodents and even livestock.

Now you are ready to see the dogs and cats available for adoption. Every effort is made to update these pictures weekly but due to volunteer staffing it is not always possible.

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Send mail to jcanimalshelter@embarqmail.com with questions or comments about this web site. Last modified: 08/01/08