Posting on behalf of
@Chrissy Lowe from
Iredell County -I was hoping you could help with some information. We have a foster to adopt program for our heartworm positive dogs that keeps them in foster for the duration of their treatment (6-8 months) with their adopter.
Even though we have a full time veterinarian on staff our state laws wont allow for us to treat the public's animals.
Yesterday one of the dogs in that program slipped out of its collar and killed a small dog that was being walked down the street by its owner. Now the victim is holding us financially responsible. The dog had a history of small prey drive (killing 2 cats and a pig) that was disclosed to the foster.
In the past 3 months we have been placing dogs with know behavior history up for adoption/foster after all the facts (behavior history, cause of bite, observed behavior, staff interactions) are considered by the director, shelter supervisor, and shelter veterinarian and the path is ruled on as a group. We also created a behavior waiver that discloses all known behavior history to the new owner/ adopter. And we recently started a weekend sleepover program(foster) for our long term large dogs that has been very successful.
My concern is that the county is going to make us stop these programs due to the liability. Is there any advice or articles I can read on how to better protect ourselves? I am trying to have an argument ready if they try to shut down our programs that allow our large dogs to get out to foster/adoption.
THANK YOU!
#Behavior,TrainingandEnrichment#FieldServicesandPublicSafety*#FosterPrograms#LawsandPublicPolicy------------------------------
Thank you all for all you do!
Amber Freiwald
Maddie's Fund
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