“Holy Doggie Doodoo, PCAR! WHY ARE YOUR ADOPTION FEES SO MUCH?!?!?”

Well, I’m so glad you asked! We get this question a LOT at our rescue. And there’s a very good reason behind it.

Ready?

Let’s play hypotheticals.

There’s a dog that had $1,500 spent on all of her vetting. You see, she was left out in the cold after her owner got sick and died, and this sweet girl had a benign breast cancer tumor that needed to be removed, as well as shots to get up-to-date, a spay to perform, and a really nasty dental cleaning to be done. You can say her adoption fee is in the range of $250-350+, for kicks let’s say $250, which I might add, is on the high end of our adoption fee range of pricing. This $250 is not even covering half of her medical bills. “But WHY?” you ask sadly.

Adoption fees are put in place for a reason. These dogs go to their home fully vetted, spayed or neutered, microchipped, they’re always on heartworm and flea prevention and some dogs need heartworm treatment which cost $800-$900 in order to do what we call a “fast kill.” (If you’d like to learn more about heartworm prevention and treatment, please go to The Heartworm Society‘s webpage and browse around!) This heartworm treatment does NOT including their other vetting, which is annual vetting, teeth cleaning as needed, and any scrapes or bumps that happen in life while they are under our care.

Let’s not even talk about the price of food, emergency vet visits, or other essentials like a crate, bowls, harnesses, collars. If you as a potential pet parent are not willing to give these fur-kids, most of which have already gone through so much in life in their short time with us, a chance based on a reasonably priced adoption fee, what does that say about the quality of life you are offering them?

Everyone, presumably yourself as a potential adopter, and definitely the workers of PCAR that care for these dogs every day, wants to ensure that these animals will go into loving homes with someone who can afford to take care of them and will not dump them, leave them to die or return them to that in some cases, neglect they came to us from.

As a rescue, you can see that we literally lose money with every dog that we adopt out. And that? That is a beautiful thing. You see, we are not government subsidized at all. We get no check from the town budget for taking care of our animals. We survive on donations and a generous founder’s hard work. We go into sometimes horrific situations, we make it work, and we love all the animals that come through our gates in the process, and every one of our animals leaves in much better shape than he or she arrived in, mentally and physically. So yes, we have adoption fees, and with good reason.