Many people don't know the difference between a shelter and a rescue...or that there even is a difference. There are also differences between rescues that most people are not aware of. Hopefully this will answer some questions that people may have and give us a better understanding of the differences.
Shelters are usually government funded. Even if they are private shelters they receive money from the cities and often surrounding cities in rural areas through contracts that have with each city to take in strays picked up by animal control.
When an animal at a shelter becomes ill, the outcome is quite often euthanasia. This is to prevent the spread of disease in the shelter. It’s less costly to just “get rid” of the problem than to treat it. Most shelters simply do not have the space to medically quarentine animals or the staff or time needed to nurse animals back to health.
Rescues, on the other hand, receive no funding from local cities. All funding comes from community donations. Sometimes rescues might receive grants or corporate sponsorships but as in our case most places want to see the community support the rescue for 2-3 yearas before they are willing to awared any grant monies.
At rescues when an animal becomes ill the rescue takes on the expense at full cost and also don’t euthanize when an animal becomes ill nor do we euthanize to "make room" when an animal's "time is up." Some veteranarians do offer us rescue discounts to help with the cost of not euthanizing.
An animal rescue group or animal rescue organization is dedicated to pet adoption. These groups take unwanted, abandoned, abused, or stray pets and attempt to find suitable homes for them. Many rescue groups are created by and run by volunteers, who take the animals into their homes and care for them — including training, playing, handling medical issues, and solving behavior problems — until a suitable permanent home can be found.
Most rescues like ours do not have any paid staff. All persons associated including the founders receive no money for what they do. At rescues every dime donated to us literally goes to the care of the animals.
Shelters often have multiple paid staff and donations help to support those wages/salaries.
Most rescue groups use similar adoption procedures, including completing an application, checking a veterinary reference, conducting a phone interview and a home visit. Rescue organizations are usually volunteer-run organizations and survive on donations and adoption fees. The adoption fees do not always cover the significant costs involved in rescue which can include traveling to pick up an animal in need, providing veterinary care, vaccinations, food, spaying and neutering, training, and more.
Most animals in the care of rescue groups live with foster home volunteers as members of the family until an appropriate adopter is found. There are a number of different techniques that can be used to make the transition from life at a rescue's foster home to an adoptive home easier on the animal. Generally, rescue groups provide adopters with basic information to aid in a successful transition.
Shelter dogs are usually warehoused in high stress environments often getting little to no interaction on a regular basis and kept in small kennels for long periods of time until they are euthanized for space when not adopted.
At our rescue we have both sanctuary animals (animals that have not or will not ever be adopted out) as well as adoptable animals. Sanctuary animals will live the rest of their lives with us and never be made available for adoption. These animals at our rescue include several horses and 8 dogs. These animals actually have come to us over a 20 year period prior to actually becoming a 501c3 and 2 are severe abuse survivors who came to us after becoming a 501c3 who still have hope but we know they may become full fledged sanctuary dogs. Adoptable animals are animals with rehabilitated issues or no issues at all that will make great companion animals or have the right temperament for us to donate them as service dog candidates to veterans.
Our rescue also practices cage free living with the exception of crate training or if we are running errands in town and the dogs are kenneled rather than running on the property loose while we are not present. This protects them from being stolen or escaping the property while we are not there because the have tops and locks. The rest of the time as you can see by following our Facebook pages the dogs live free and come and go in and out of the homes they live in, participate in training, exercising and socializing to help make them more adoptable and allows their personalities to blossom so people can see the dogs behaviors and personalities before adopting.
Dogs will mark in inappropriate places for several reasons, usually relating to instincts they still retain.
