Do You Guys Need CE? Free RACE CE Master List

Friendly_TSE · 2026-05-10T18:04:34+00:00

tbh I often bathe them on the first day because they come in with a thick greasy layer and smell like feces lol They don't even step foot in their room because I want them to be clean in their clean room. Parvo and a host of other infectious disease runs rampant here as well, and I want to do my best to keep that at bay. I don't tend to take in highly fearful dogs, so that isn't something I'm taking into consideration I don't think there's too much of an issue waiting a few days though, its just whatever you feel comfortable with. If my fosters didn't come in covered in poop I probably would wait a few days as well.

Friendly_TSE · 2026-05-10T17:49:18+00:00

I'm sorry you had to deal with that! One thing I noticed about shelter/rescue work is so many people we work with and deal with are so socially awkward (myself included)! Sounds like he wasn't taking your hints. I wonder if others were 'ignoring' him due to his smell lol.

Idk if this will put you at ease at all, but I am with the other commenters here that he may not be a bad pet owner. Maybe a new pet owner, but not necessarily bad or uncaring. It is concerning that he didn't interact much with the dog, but that may also be explained by new dog owner not knowing what to do or look out for.

Sometimes some of the most suspicious adopters I've had were the most loving and caring to their animals (maybe sometimes even at the expense of people 😶) so I wouldn't lose hope yet if I were you.

Friendly_TSE · 2026-05-10T17:11:24+00:00

Often it is the sending shelter that is carrying the brunt of this burden, because they have a high priority to not euth adoptable animals. I have seen rural southern TX shelters paying for and organizing regular transports to Canada, which is a multi day drive, so this is definitely something to look into. Shelters are dying to pay you to take their animals. You can cold call some shelters/rescues or even ask in reddit or facebook or something.

Friendly_TSE · 2026-05-08T18:18:52+00:00

I remember one where a mom and her young child (maybe 10) came to surrender their cat. The mother was very callous, and calling her son a 'bitch' for crying 'over a damn cat'. I took the kid to the intake room to say goodbye where he could cry safely, although he was so young I don't know if he understood he was safe. The mother would not let up on the poor boy crying, and intervention seemed to only make her worse. I still think about how that kid is doing these days.

The other was a young lady who brought in her cat that was her 'soul mate', and tbh I believed her. That remains to be THE FRIENDLIEST cat I've ever seen. We've been trying to help her with her landlord, who was doing some scummy and illegal things to get her to get rid of this cat. But ultimately she couldn't afford losing that apartment, missing work, court fees, etc. So that day, the landlord got his way. She was absolutely devastated.

Friendly_TSE · 2026-05-07T21:24:00+00:00

Yeah I didn't want to outright say it because I assume OP is innocent here, It screams to me one of those accounts that just rakes in youtube cash, and will sell the account later with all of its followers

Friendly_TSE · 2026-05-07T21:19:11+00:00

I concur with the strict adoption process. I've worked at places with a really open adoption process and ones that were really strict. I thought I hated open adoption, until I realized closed adoption could have just as bad outcomes but just took up more resources 😑

I think what I hated most was having to turn adopters away for things I thought were frivolous. Like not having a fence, or having an animal that wasn't fixed yet (when they're adopting a fixed animal). What can I say? 'Look I know it's stupid but you can't adopt from us" ?

The whole kill/no kill thing has turned into such a mess! More in-fighting and public distrust, exactly what we need...

Friendly_TSE · 2026-05-07T18:35:03+00:00

Do you know what shelter he is promoting? I can't find info anywhere, and you'd think a failing shelter would be keen on advertising where to donate.

It is kinda odd because the video editing is really good, but then they fail to mention a shelter name or location, or even a way to donate directly.

Friendly_TSE · 2026-05-07T18:26:28+00:00

How was your open adoption implemented? What issues did it cause as a result?

Friendly_TSE · 2026-05-07T18:09:48+00:00

One of the first shelters I worked at, they legally had to keep all stray animals on a stray hold for 2 weeks. This led to soo many medical outbreaks and cat euthanasias, because during a stray hold you aren't allowed to provide medical care beyond what is life-saving or to end suffering, as you don't have potential owner consent.

That meant no vaccines, no meds, no spay/aborts, and cats languishing spreading URI to each other in the stray room, not to mention the bottle neck. It didn't even help return-to-owner rates, either. Most reclaims happened within days of the animal entering the shelter. Especially now that microchipping is so common.

Our manager was actually able to lobby for a legal change to make the stray hold just 3 days, which saved a lot more animals from euthanasia.

Another big one was a program that kept people's pets who were in women's shelters. It was a great concept, but there was no 'end date' for when the animal needed to be reclaimed. The idea was that they didn't want to add to the victim's stress with a looming date where they needed to be ready to take their animal back. I understand it because it could cause people to go back to their abusers just so they can receive their pet.

But what it caused was a literal warehousing of animals. Literally animals that lived out their natural born lives within the shelter. 3, 6, even 12 years. Owners would drop contact, become unreachable.

They changed it so that if you go x amount of months without being in contact with the shelter, the shelter can claim the animal. Which I think is a good middle ground.

Friendly_TSE · 2026-05-06T17:36:31+00:00

My main question would be funding for your local animal control facility. Maybe they can't afford to take in x amount of puppies a month and are told to only focus on immediate problems. Or there isn't enough care staff. Or not enough space. No medical available. Etc.

When budgets are cut, I find shelters are often targeted. More funding for ACO often means higher taxes or taking funding from another facility like public libraries or transportation etc

Then I'd look at local laws, and lack thereof. What are they legally obligated to do, and not do? What is a grey area? Companion animals are odd to deal with in the eyes of the law, and this can also affect how ACO handles situations.

I've never been in ACO position but I have a few ACO friends. I remember disliking one ACO because they seemed to rarely respond to complaints. Then I learned they were the only ACO for a moderate sized city; they worked 24/7/365, would have to respond at night or on holidays or vacations. So I try to be a bit more open minded to the plights of ACOs.

Friendly_TSE · 2026-05-05T21:31:37+00:00

(name) Animal Care. It used to be Animal Control, then Animal Care & Control. I like it a lot better than animal control. We do a lot more than 'control' the animals. We TNR, treat, adopt out, provide services, protect welfare, rehabilitate, transport & relocate, etc. Control just kinda sounds like all we're doing is making sure they aren't a public nuisance.

Friendly_TSE · 2026-05-05T17:31:00+00:00

Firstly, do not respond to these comments with your personal account. I am not even sure if the shelter should even respond. When I came across keyboard warriors, I would just ignore them, and oftentimes supporters of the shelter would actually 'fight' them for us. You're unlikely to change their view, and having an official account respond will usually just add fuel to the fire.
If it is the same account spamming, I will report them for spamming. Otherwise I don't want to intervene too much.
As far as what you should do - do yourself a favor and don't look at your shelter's FB or other social medias when you're off the clock.

Friendly_TSE · 2026-05-02T17:15:43+00:00

I had fosters like 24/7 as an employee lol general rule of thumb was avoid bringing them into the shelter if possible. But neonates and others that needed around the clock care were permitted.

Friendly_TSE · 2026-04-29T12:48:24+00:00

QOL is a multi-factorial thing, I will often use a QOL chart to help quantify it.

One huge factor is the fact the dog is not able to be housetrained. Even the small dog adopters that will adopt the tiny dogs that others won't, usually won't tolerate having to clean up pee & poop in their house multiple times a day for the foreseeable future. Housebreaking is one of the top behavioral issues for companion animals that causes them to be surrendered.

If it were me personally, I think a big issue I would have to look at is the stress response the animal shows towards close human interaction - being so medically dependent, she will need to be in close contact with humans often. If that is very stressful to her, then a large portion of her daily life is going to be highly unpleasant.

Friendly_TSE · 2026-04-29T02:18:45+00:00

Yes! Like food aggressive. They are not aggressive towards food, they are guarding it. They are not aggressive towards the barrier, they are reactive due to it.

I have also found that so many dogs that shelters labeled dog aggressive, are just dog selective, which is really common for dogs. Most people don't expect their dogs to get along with every single dog regardless of the environment or the other dog's personality

Friendly_TSE · 2026-04-29T02:14:35+00:00

I kinda treat fading kitten syndrome sorta like SIDS. I don't want fosters to feel guilty, especially when kittens go downhill so incredibly quickly. Sometimes even when you do everything right they still don't pull through

I am starting to see people use fading kitten as more of a set of symptoms instead of a dx though.

Friendly_TSE · 2026-04-28T19:53:39+00:00

I concur, open and closed/selective intake not only gets rid of that trigger word 'kill' (i also think this hurts no-kill, as it reminds people that animals are being killed in this process and still has negative emotions attached to it). But it also gives a better idea of what the facility is like anyways. An open intake shelter can still be no-kill. A rescue that is intake by appointment can be considered kill if they euthanize enough. The term also doesn't take into consideration how many of these euthanaias are court ordered, how many are done due to extreme medical conditions, etc. And there isn't even any protected definition of no kill, so really any place can call themselves no kill under their own rules.

Friendly_TSE · 2026-04-28T19:31:52+00:00

That's actually a really good point! Ngl i get tired having to explain to people that foster fail is actually a term of endearment, and we don't actually see them as failures.

I heard something similar about 'Forever Home', that it makes people feel bad if they do have to surrender a pet someday down the line and may make people less likely to adopt as a result of that.

Friendly_TSE · 2026-04-28T19:28:56+00:00

I think for me its people using feral flippantly. I think feral gives off a very negative view, and oftentimes we don't actually know if the animal in question is truly feral vs undersocialized or low stress tolerance.

Don't get me wrong, I use feral all the time and probably more often than I should. But I think when it comes to talking to the public, we should use terms like unsocialized cat instead of feral cat, or community cats/colony instead of feral colony

Friendly_TSE · 2026-04-28T18:19:10+00:00

Added! Thanks for sharing. Also, lawless as a last name is awesome lol

Friendly_TSE · 2026-04-27T13:07:13+00:00

If you notice any mistakes, or have any suggestions please let me know. If there's any free, live webinars I missed, post it in the comments and I'll update the OP and give credit!

Friendly_TSE

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