The More People I Meet, the More I Love My Dog

Animal lovers have said this for years, but today, it pounded in my head. Today was to be a good day: get work done, do an adoption, pull in another dog to foster care, go home. All of that happened, but with one glitch.

Several weeks ago, we adopted out a dog through placement assistance for a friend of one of our volunteers. On paper and at the meet and greet, everything seemed fine. So the volunteer left the dog with the new owner, and was going to return with the paperwork. After a week of having phone calls unanswered, the volunteer went to the home on Monday, only to get no answer. She returned again on Tuesday, still no answer. On Wednesday, she left a note under the doormat, and noticed that mail was piling up. Today she called me, saying she was concerned and that she could hear the dog barking inside. So, we called SPD. Sure enough, the dog had been left alone for at least three days, and there was no power to the place. He seemed ok, and we put him back into foster care immediately. But I'm still fuming. How do people do this?

It just reminds me the reason we put all these safeguards on doing adoptions. We can't predict everything, but know that we certainly try our best.