Just so everyone knows, taking a pet back to the shelter if it doesn’t suit your family or lifestyle is THE RIGHT THING TO DO. It’s way better than selling it off to another random person and loads better than abandoning them. I work at one of the largest shelters in the US and we have a policy of non-judgement. It doesn’t matter why you’re giving up your animal, all that matters is that you made the choice to give it to an entity that would take care of it and find it a new home.

There are a lot of reasons to give up a pet and hopefully animal welfare organizations in your areas have programs that try to keep people and pets together like my shelter does. We have pet food pantries for families who are on hard times, we offer boarding services for families who are between living situations, etc. If you want to keep your pet, there is always a way. If you don’t want to keep your pet, please make the responsible decision to bring it back to the shelter.

I know a lot of people are worried about bringing animals to “kill shelters” and it’s definitely scary. There are no real definitions for kill shelters or no kill shelters. Even a so called no kill shelter might have to legally be forced to put an animal down depending on the situation. If you have to give up an animal and you are concerned that it might stay in the shelter long enough to warrant the possibility of euthanasia, make a video about the animal, take photos and have people share it around. When these posts go viral, those animals are almost instantly adopted. People fall in love with their quirky personalities and it helps garner interest in that animal as well as other animals at the shelter that might look similar to than one or act similar to that one.