A Miraculous Adoption Marathon
We are constantly impressed by the resilience of the animals we care for at Rescue Village. While the average length of stay for adult dogs is between 14-20 days — for Skylar, Conner, Hazel and Tommy, days turned to months. Sometimes it seems that the wait is harder on the staff and volunteers, and we wonder: What more can we do to get them noticed? Are we doing enough? Shouldn’t we be flooding Facebook with even more posts about them?
Rescue Village does everything possible to help animals get noticed, but we have found there is no silver bullet to inspire an adoption of one animal or another – rather, adoptions always seem to happen when the right individual or family decides it’s the right time for that new, furry family member they’ve been considering.
But it doesn’t mean that the wait isn’t sometimes frustrating. For instance, Conner, a white pit-mix with a curly tail, appeared on Fox 8 and anchor Natalie Herbick pleaded that someone adopt him. He was so well-behaved for the segment he was practically falling asleep while Natalie was petting him, but still, nobody called or came to meet Conner.
Soon after the Fox 8 segment, Conner was featured on WKYC Channel 3 with Leon Bibb, and his goofy antics were seen on TV, as well as a social media post that was seen by an additional 38,700 people. Still, nobody was taking Conner home. He had trips to the farmers market, field trips to the parks wearing an adopt-me vest, and he, along with some of his fellow shelter dogs, were showcased at Woofstock’s Rescue Row on September 8th – and still, he was passed over by potential adopters day after day.
Conner was finally adopted at the end of October after waiting 158 days by a family that had met him at Woofstock. They agreed that if Conner was still there when the time was right, that they would take him home. One week prior to Conner’s adoption, Skylar, another long-term pit bull mix went home after 113 days at the shelter. And then, five days after Conner’s adoption, it was Hazel’s turn after waiting 110 days for a new family.
Pit bulls are typically the longest-term residents, or the plain brown dog that blends into the background and has no distinguishing features. Because dogs will be dogs, they bark and jump as people pass by their kennels in hopes of getting attention. They don’t know that it’s the calm, quiet dogs that go home sooner because people believe they will be easier to handle and more well-behaved in the home.
Tommy is one such dog, a brown pit bull – adorable, cuddly, well-behaved, always happy and bouncing in his kennel – and while we were so elated that now three long-term dogs went home, we all still worried and wondered “what about Tommy?” Tommy’s wait was the longest of them all.
During Tommy’s 247 days here at the shelter, only two people asked to meet him. But finally, on his 248th day at Rescue Village, it was Tommy’s turn to get adopted – making a total of four incredible adoptions in just two weeks! A nice couple had seen Tommy – not on social media, not at the park, and not at the farmers market – they saw him on the Rescue Village website and came to meet him. They had no idea how meaningful it was for the entire shelter; simply, they had been thinking about getting a dog, decided it was the right time, searched the Rescue Village website and fell in love. Oddly enough, another couple came to meet Tommy the very same time and day!
The staff and volunteers provide walks and daily enrichment to help the dogs remain physically and mentally healthy. We fall in love with them and when an animal stays at the shelter for so long, we become their champions, like Shelter Specialist, Tyler, who quickly became known as Tommy’s mom. When she heard Tommy was being adopted on her day off, she rushed to the shelter to give him a goodbye hug and get one last picture with him.
