www.arf-sc.org
We're a non-profit organization of animal loving volunteers with several simple goals:
1. To save the lives of pets who have been abandoned to fend for themselves
2. To make those pets in our care healthy, comfortable, and loved until we can find a responsible new home for them.
3. To encourage responsible pet care...to include neutering, vaccinations, parasite control, and veterinary care.
Adopting a Pet
This is the most critical part of the program. So many more people want to get rid of their pets than want to adopt. This puts us in the awkward position of turning many pets away from our shelter... there's only so much room.
So Please, Please, Please consider opening your heart and home...
It's hard to find good homes for all the pets that need them. The pets that need homes need more than just part time love. They need a new responsible owner that can and will provide a safe home, that will take care of their medical needs, and give them attention as well as food, water and exercise.
We're looking for adults who are used to making and keeping committments. So there are a few rules and there is some money involved.
1. There is an adoption fee. It's $65 for either a cat or a dog.
You get a lot for your $65:
We test for leukemia in cats and for heartworms in dogs
We give them their first vaccinations, including leukemia in cats
We treat them, if needed for diseases and injuries
We get rid of any ear mites, fleas, worms, and ticks.
We give them a bath if needed
We spay the female pets and neuter the male pets
If there's any money left over, it helps to pay for the several thousand dollars we spend each month in mortgages, electricity, food, and labor taking care of of our animal friends.
Please, if you can't afford the $65, please don't get a pet. Remember...it's costs at least a couple hundred dollars a year to feed and take care of the average pet.
2. We want you to be happy with your adopted pet. But you take a small financial risk when you adopt a pet from us...there is no charge for bringing a pet back to us within the first few days if you change your mind...but there is also no refund of your adoption fee. Understand what a logistical problem it is for us to take an animal back. We are so short of room...as soon as we adopt a pet out, we use it's cage for the next pet waiting to get into our program, so if you bring a pet back, we don't have any place to put it.
3. Other than that, it's easy to adopt a pet from us...we're certainly anxious to find new homes. But: We reserve the right to say no to people that want to adopt a pet but who we think are unlikely to be good pet owners.
Dropping off a Pet to Place in our Shelter Program
A. The biggest problem of a No Kill Shelter is that we don't have room to take in new pets until we find homes for the ones already in our care. That means we may have to put you on a waiting list for a few weeks. Please understand.
Please phone ahead to see if we have room: 864-882-4488
B. To help off set the expenses of taking care of so many pets, there is a fee to drop them off at our shelter.
Cats: $30 if fairly healthy. $50-100 if obviously sick or injured. We have been quite successful in finding homes within 6 weeks for most of our stray cats.
Dogs: $30 a month. (it costs us $2-3 a day to house, feed, and take care of dogs) We'll try our best to find a home quickly, but if we're unable to, and you stop paying the monthly fee, we reserve the right to transfer dogs to other shelters to make room for other, hopefully more desirable dogs.
Things you can do if you have a pet you don't want to keep for any reason:
1. Advertise. Newspaper ads are often successful and in our local South Carolina Upstate area, the nice people at our local papers will advertise free pets for free. All you have to do is phone in the ad.
The Seneca Journal: 864-882-2375
2. Arrange for a private, no kill shelter to take on your pet if they have room.
This is a good choice, and one we provide, but the service is not free, and there's often the problem of there being no room.
3. Take the pet to a regular county shelter. They will try their best to find homes, but there's a high chance the pet will be destroyed. Shelters are overwhelmed with numbers. In Oconee County, people are working hard to raise money to build a larger shelter. Hopefully it will be ready soon because hundreds of pets are killed each year.
4. If your pet is a purebreed, call a rescue group for that breed to see if they can find a home. Just use Google or other search engine to find the nearest rescue group for your breed.
5. Advertise on the internet. PetFinder.com is free and quite successful, especially if you can provide a digital picture. In addition to PetFinder, there are several other large internet pet classified sites...simply type in pet adoptions in your search engine.
OnThis Page
Welcome
There's something special
about our relationship as humans with pets and other animals.
Most of us...all over the world...have at least some warm and wonderful feelings for pets that depend on us for food, shelter, discipline, and love.
We hope to make a small dent in our area in caring for those pets that don't have anyone willing to care for them.
We hope to find them new homes.
Please help us.
On Other Pages on This Site:
(pictures and descriptions)
(pictures and descriptions)
Some of the letters are quite interesting. Also, I've written about the challenges of running a no-kill shelter on this page.
-includes links, articles, and comments about basic pet training. Also about clicker and other "Gentle" training methods. About solving specific behavior problems in pets
-articles, comments, and links about this wonderful subject
Interested in Pet Veterinary Care?
Visit our huge veterinary site at
All about the care and treatment of pets.
Volunteers:
We are seeing a lot more volunteers playing with the cats and dogs at our shelter lately. Thank you very much. We now have a volunteer in charge of volunteers!
We also have plans in the works where volunteers will be taking a few dogs and cats to Saluda River and PetSmart Pet Stores for an afternoon to show off the pets as well as to distribute our shelter information. This will hopefully lead to new homes for these pets which will allow us to take on some new pets from our waiting lists.
Speaking of volunteers, if anyone is willing and able to write a few interesting stories or commentaries about pet owner responsibility, the human-animal bond etc, suitable for newspaper publishing (as well as for inclusion on this site), we badly need more newspaper publicity. And thanks again to The Seneca Tribune for printing pictures of our stray pets in their paper.
Thanks,
Roger Ross, DVM
Please Visit The Rest of our Site:
My Ten Commandments of Responsible Pet Ownership
by Roger Ross, DVM
1. Common sense over frivolous emotional desires: not to get a pet at all if you don't have the appropriate setting, time, or money to devote to a living creature.
2. A safe and comfortable setting.
3. Decent food and water on a regular basis.
4. An appropriate place to eliminate bodily wastes
5. Exercise, play, and frequent companionship
6. Enough time and effort spent on training, if you have
a dog, to make him or her a joy to be around rather than an aggrivation to everyone.
7. A plan and preparation for those times when you need to leave your pet for extended periods such as vacations, job assignments, funerals, weddings, and so forth.
8. Grooming Care if needed. Pets are miserable if heavily matted or suffering from dry, flakey skin or seborrhea.
9. Neutering: Unless you really plan on breeding your pet and taking on all the extra responsibilities of that project, neutering your pet prevents all kinds of health and anxiety problems for your pet, all kinds of nuisance problems for you and your community such as roaming and biting, and it eliminates unwanted litters. Remember that each and every county KILLS HUNDREDS of pets each month.
10. Health Care. Without vaccinations and treatment for illnesses and injuries, most animals would die at a young age or live in pain and misery. We expect a good responsible pet owner to provide regular veterinary check ups, recommended vaccinations, parasite control, and veterinary health care when injuries and illnesses occur. And now that we know the importance of gum health, we expect good pet owners to provide dental care for their pets on a regular basis as needed.
