Surrendering Your Animal

Need to find another home for your pet?

Homeward Bound is here to help you with this difficult decision! Here are some things to consider:

Do you want to keep your pet but are finding certain behaviors a challenge?
Feel free to call us for advice and referrals on common behavioral problem such as housetraining, inappropriate elimination in cats, chewing household items, barking etc. Your veterinarian is also a good source of help--many behavioral issues have physical causes!

Home-to-Home Adoptions: We can help you find the right home for your pet while keeping them in the comfort of your own home.

If you need to rehome your pet but want to keep them out of the shelter environment, our Home-to-Home program allows you to list your animal for adoption on our website while keeping them at home by your side. When rehoming your pet, it is important to be thorough and patient; finding the right home takes time. Investing time into the rehoming process increases your chance of successfully placing your pet in a loving home that is not only a great fit, but also a safe place for your pet. Rehoming your pet helps shelters like us save more animals in need.

We will promote your pet on our website while he/she remains at home with you. When our shelter population is light, we may highlight your pet on our Facebook and/or in the Addison Independent newspaper's Pets in Need section.

We do not play any role in the adoption; all communications and agreements are between the pet owner and prospective adopters and the program is restricted to Vermont and Essex County, NY, animals only. There is a $25 fee associated with our Home-to-Home Adoption program that will be collected prior to processing the questionnaire.

In order to keep the program running smoothly we ask that-

• The pet owner make an effort to be prompt in their communications with potential adopters
• The pet owner let us know when the animal has found a new home.  We will post animals through this program for two months and then will delete the postings unless we have heard otherwise from you.  
• The pet owner be as thorough and accurate as possible in filling out the Home-to-Home Adoption questionnaire - click here for the dog questionnaire, click here for the cat questionnaire, and click here for the small animal questionnaire (guinea pigs, rabbits, etc).

If you need to surrender your animal to us for re-homing, you can rest assured that he or she will receive great care and a lot of attention while we work to find him or her a new permanent home!

Although we do not charge fees for surrendered animals, we do gratefully accept donations that will offset the costs of caring. Please fill out a surrender application. We will review your application and get in touch with you within 48 hours. On average, we can schedule an appointment for you within a week to ten days of your application, but there are times in the summer months when the wait may be up to 3-4 weeks.

When you bring an animal to us, please be sure that dogs are on leashes and cats or other small animals are in carriers. We encourage you to bring personal belongings, such as toys or blankets, that will ease your pet’s transition to the shelter. We cannot, however, guarantee that those belongings will stay with your pet throughout his stay here. Your appointment will take about 30-60 minutes. Please bring recent vaccination records. If you are not the owner, bring a signed letter from that person giving you permission to relinquish the pet. We do not have the staff or resources to pick up animals for surrender to the shelter.

When you surrender an animal to us, we assume you have done so because you had no other alternative and we expect you to trust us to make the best choice for the animal and the community. All efforts are made to place animals in our care into lifetime, loving homes. We do not have pre-established time limits for how long animals can stay in the shelter. However, there are times that an animal will not be put up for adoption because a health or behavior/aggression issue makes a responsible placement impossible. In these cases, we make the humane decision to euthanize the animal.