The Process

The following is out of my Rescue Guide from the chapter entitled Process, which follows the Preparation chapter posted previously:

1) Now that you know everything about your animal you can determine what its ideal home is. If you cannot determine an ideal home; you are not yet prepared. Do not proceed until you are confident in this knowledge. When you are ready, write down the Ideal Home for this animal. Commit it to memory.

2) Write an ad. Ideally your ad will generate calls from people who have interest, but would need to ask you questions. In other words; you don’t want to say too much in your ad. You want to say what the animal is, the sex, and the price. But above all you want to state that the candidate will be scrutinized. The whole point of this ad is to discourage any riff-raff from calling you, but let through true candidates. You don’t have time to waste on anyone who is not a potential candidate. Let me repeat: You don’t have time to waste on anyone who is not a potential candidate. You and your animal will suffer in this case.

Example ad (bold AND capitalize “approved home”):

To APPROVED HOME only: male bunny, neutered, $75, 555-555-5555


In this example you are stating right up front that you will be scrutinizing the candidates. You are telling breeders “don’t call here.” You are also saying “no freebies here.” Also keep in mind you must use a price that is competitive with like rescues regardless as to what the same animals “go for” at the local pet store/breeder: Remember, you want to attract attention from someone who is interested in adoption, not in “purchasing merchandise.” Also, most rescues determine their prices, by how much they have invested in the animals under their care, such as for neutering, vaccines, vet checks and so on. You have made these same investments, and are justified in asking similar amounts as they are. Last but not least; this short little ad is cheap.

3) Place the ad. Use commonly read newspapers in your area; it's of no use wasting your money on ads that will be read by people umpteen miles away…most are not willing to drive that far. However, those few people who are willing to drive that far will find your ad on the Internet. So do make sure that wherever you place the ad will also give you Internet exposure. Try also to find ad deals like the,“2 lines 4 day special” kind. Use a deal like this to run the ad Thursday through Sunday. Do not advertise in Penny saver type papers; those readers are looking for “free” animal ads. Do use Craigslist, but be sure to give no indication that this animal is free. If you haven't figured it out yet; Free To Good Home ads are no way to actually get a good home for this animal.

Note: Do not place your ad around any important holidays. Do not place your ad just before Halloween. Most sophisticated rescues know that cats, especially black cats are targeted by weirdos (I will not define this word for any one's sake...you know who you are) during this holiday. Do not place your ad just before Easter…especially if you have any kind of caged animals to adopt out. Especially do not place your ad before Christmas. Allow at least one month before in this case, and one month after. If however, a potential candidate contacts you and the intent is to give a pet as any other sort of gift, such as for a birthday, educate this individual as to why it's discouraged to give animals as gifts, and invite them to contact you at some future date.


My next post will continue with this same chapter.