Adventure Dog Blog

I was just reading a post on Bark Blog that discusses a news item about a family who took their dog to the vet with tumors that required surgery they couldn’t afford. They decided to have the dog put down. The story gets a little confusing here, but essentially what happened is a visiting vet decided to do the surgery on the dog and keep it. Eventually, the family was contacted and reunited with their dog, and left quite upset over the whole ordeal.

In Bark Blog, they raise the question of what can be done to help animals that are being put down because their owners cannot afford surgery.

This isn’t the only scenario where I’ve seen dogs suffer because someone can’t afford their surgery. At my local animal shelter, they often have older dogs up for adoption that require expensive work on their teeth. The shelter will only let someone adopt the dog if they pay for the surgery and have it done first, and so often these dogs will go un-adopted. There must be a way to help these dogs as well.

There are a few problems that need to be solved besides saving the dog’s lives. The first would be having the surgery paid for and completed. The second is finding some way to keep the dog with it’s family.

1. Create a pool of vets who are willing to perform surgeries on animals to ensure they are more easily adopted from animal shelters, and for families that cannot afford surgeries on their pets.

2. Create a fund that provides financial assistance to families that need it to pay for these surgeries.

3. Find a way to provide better payment options for low income families who require surgery for their pets.

Unfortunately, there is a shortage of vets who are willing to work for free, probably because there are just too many animals and families needing help. A vet has to earn a living. Maybe this issue could be solved if all vets donated a certain amount of time per month to the pool.

Who would start and maintain the fund for assisting families financially? And can vets offer better payment solutions?

Hopefully this is an issue that more people will think about and the ball will start to roll.