SPECIAL ADOPTIONS
Some animals have personality, or behavior, quirks which require a special kind of parent(s). Shelby Humane believes these animals deserve just as happy an ending as any other.
In order to make sure these animals get the best chance possible at success, we require adoption applications be sent in by all interested parents. These applications will be reviewed by our Special Adoption Team (S.A.T.). The S.A.T. consists of Adoption, Medical, Behavior, and Training staff members. As a group, they will determine which of the potential adoption situation would offer the animal being considered the highest likelihood of successful placement into a furever home.
Shelby Humane is committed to placing all of our animals into their forever home, not just a home.
Please read this application carefully, paying particular attention to the question on your commitment to making this adoption work. Are you willing to put in the work required to help your new pet acclimate to their new home? Are you willing to care for them for life? If the answer is yes, then continue to fill out our adoption application. If the answer is no, then please reconsider your decision to adopt at this time.
Why did an animal shelter - whose mission it is to re-home homeless animals - just tell potential adopters to reconsider their decision to adopt? Simple, because our animals have been through enough. They have lived in a shelter full of unfamiliar sounds, smells, and experiences. They have been given away by their owners for a myriad of reasons, or lived on the streets subsisting on garbage and scraps, or been abandoned on the side of a back-country road without warning, or who knows what else. The least we can do as an animal welfare organization is offer them stability. The opportunity to be adopted into one home, a forever home, where the adopters agree to put in any work required to ensure the adoption is successful.
What do we mean by work? Patience, training, understanding, grace, more patience, more training, more understanding, more grace, and… repeat.