Surrendering a Dog
An unprecedented volume of requests to our Home to take in dogs in need has sadly led to a wait period of at least 2 months.
Privately re-homing your dog can be time consuming and add further stress to your situation. It can also be difficult interviewing potential new owners and inviting strangers to your home. It is also possible that people who have been unable to adopt from a rescue organisation, search Gumtree and Facebook to purchase a dog.
If you do decide to re-home your dog privately, we recommend that you never offer your dog free to a good home and always place some monetary value to try and encourage genuine enquiries.
By surrendering your dog to a rescue group like the Dog’s Refuge Home, you can feel safe in the knowledge that our adoption process is rigorous and designed to gain as much information on the person wanting to adopt and their lifestyle. We will also take into account your feedback about your dog and our trainer’s assessment to make sure we get the right match in a new home where your dog’s needs will be met. We also keep the new owner’s contact details on record so we can always get in contact with them to check in.
Along with our stringent adoption process, we also welcome the return of any of our adopted dogs – at any stage throughout their life. This means that if the new owners’ circumstances change, they must return the dog to us so we can safely rehome again.
We do charge a small surrender fee of $100. If you are going through financial hardship, please speak to our staff over the phone.
Below are the steps to surrendering your dog:
1. Provide us with details about your dog
Please complete our surrender questionnaire online and we will get back to you within 24-48hrs. If you need urgent assistance, please call the office on 9381 8166 during 10am and 3.30pm daily.
Our surrender questionnaire helps us to get as much information as possible about your dog including understanding your reason for surrendering, so we can assess whether we are able to take your dog into our care. Based on the information you provide, we will either conditionally approve your dog to come into our care or we will decline. Should we decline your dog, we will provide contact information for other rescue organisations that may be able to assist you.
2. Bring Your Dog in For a Dog Test
If your dog has been conditionally approved, we will book in a date and time for you to bring your dog in so we can conduct a controlled dog meet. This is done at fence-line to see how your dog reacts to one of our resident dogs. Whilst we don’t decline dogs that are reactive to other dogs, we can decline your dog if we feel that bringing your dog into our shelter will be detrimental to his/her well-being, our staff and volunteers or members of the public.
3. Medical Assessment
Please provide all medical history with your dog. We have a veterinary hospital on site where your dog will receive a health check ahead of adoption. We may require for you to visit the vet during the assessment process.