Here at Cinque Ports Rescue we take our responsibilities very seriously, every dog we take in to our care we make a lifetime promise to keep that dog safe so to ensure this we make sure that all adopters are as thoroughly vetted as possible, and all adopters have to sign an adoption agreement which states the dog MUST be returned to our care if the adopters are unable, for whatever reason, to continue looking after their adopted dog.
We do our very best to make sure our dogs get the best homes but this week we were very upset to discover that one of our adopted dogs had been given away, without our knowledge, after only 5 months in their new home. We were fortunate enough to have discovered this fact only hours after the event and were able to have the dog immediately returned to our care, which was just as well as the dog was in a poor condition with a raging ear infection and so in need of a groom that we had to remove 400g of matted coat! We immediately contacted the ‘adopters’ who insisted they still had the dog and that they were very happy, only giving us the ‘truth’ when they realised we had checked the microchip (which has us listed as secondary contact). This family was recommended to us and thoroughly vetted beforehand, as well as routinely followed up afterwards – they were fully aware of our policies and happily signed our contract but chose to ignore them and put one of our dogs at risk. We are currently reviewing our vetting procedures and are also taking steps to ensure this family never get the opportunity to put another rescue dog at risk.
