Our Adoption
and
Drop Off Policies


Welcome to Animal Rescue Fund
of South Carolina (A.R.F.)

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.
Our 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 difficult 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 commitments. So there are a few rules and there is some money involved.


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 our animal friends.

Please, if you can't afford the adoption fee, don't get a pet.  Remember...it costs at least a couple hundred dollars a year to feed and take care of the average pet. 

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 its 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.

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

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.


Things To Do If You Have
A Pet You Can't Keep

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 animals.

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.






















On This Page:


Links to other pages
on this site:

Cats and Kittens in our program that need homes
(pictures and descriptions)


Dogs and Puppies in our program that need you.
(pictures and descriptions)

Other South Carolina Shelters
























 
The Animal Rescue Fund Of South Carolina
Home             Cats Needing Homes                Dogs Needing Homes  
Updated 7-14-2022
A plea to the public:
We know that times are tough, and that often means people have to make hard decisions, including the possibility of surrendering either a beloved pet, unwanted puppies or kittens, or adult animals that for one reason or another can no longer be kept. Almost every day, we find animals abandoned on our doorstep, stuffed into carriers or cages, with no note, and no funds to defray the costs to us to do vaccinations, testing for worms or parasites, and spay/neuter prior to adoption. For a non-profit agency, this puts a huge strain on our already minimal budget. PLEASE TALK TO US RATHER THAN ABANDONING ANIMALS AT OUR DOOR!

Anonymous abandonment of animals also deprives those on our waiting list for a spot in our shelter, meaning they must wait even longer, which is unfair. Our drop-off fee is minimal, and intended to cover the cost of preparing animals for adoption. Fees are outlined below.

Please do the right thing, both for your animals and out of consideration for the benefit we are trying to provide to both the public and the animals we offer for adoption: if you must surrender an animal, please call us and let us help you work out a reasonable solution, rather than coming in the dark of night and abandoning dogs and cats on our doorstep.

Thank you for helping us, so that we can in turn do our best to help these animals.