It's certainly been a challenging year in the rescue business.
We've suffered through a severe shortage volunteers, particularly foster homes. We had to spend alot of our closely guarded funds on kennel fees as we had no foster homes available for incoming boxers.
We were fortunate to find a couple of new foster homes in Calgary close to the end of the year. No sooner did they sign up - we had dogs for them.
I'm not sure what people think about rescue - do they think we're a big organization with unlimited help and funds? It's frustrating for us - we're all ordinary folks with families, jobs and dogs of our own. Everything we do for boxer rescue is on our own time, and quite often the money comes out of our own pockets.
Our organization operates with a lot of trust. We find the right homes for the dogs that come into our care. Sometimes that means we have to turn down potential homes and that's a hard thing to do. But I digress, back to the trust thing. Because we feel so good about the homes we pick, we sometimes don't collect the adoption donation immediately - that could happen for a variety of reasons. The most important thing for us is to get the dog into their new home as soon as possible, everything else can wait. 99% of the time that works for us. But occasionally we get people who find a reason or excuse not to pay the adoption donation. I find it hard to fathom why someone would do that. Any shortfalls in funds needed for veterinary work will come out of our volunteers pockets. I suppose the lesson to be learned is to get everything done up front-even if it means a delay in the adoption process. Us, as volunteers do not have deep enough pockets to bear the vet expenses of the dogs we take into our care
