Question:
the spca has a guinea pig in yarmouth that needs a home, i have a great home here, shouldnt be a problem right? wrong
first of all i email them and dont hear back, then i call them and start answering a questionaire. they ask if im renting or own a house, well i told them i rent so they need to contact my landlord i said thats great but i have no clue where she is at the moment and cant get ahold of her myself. besides i have lets see close to 50 animals in my house right now whats another guinea pig. i have a lady thats going tomorrow to pick up a rabbit thats there and she was going to bring the pig back with her. they wont let her unless they meet me as well. how the hell is that going to prove whether im a good pet owner or not???? they dont care that i work in a vet clinic, that i know all the spca people here or that i do rescue for them all the time with small pets. nope its against their policy!! i mean if they were gonna call my landlady why cant they call the local branch of spca and my other references and send frieda to a good home? they rather she sit there because of policy then go to a forever home. i know they dont know me from adam but shouldnt spcas work together if they know someone who is good and able to provide a home?
sorry i just had to rant a bit i was so looking forward to getting frieda too!!
i havent given up yet i may just have to get the lady going down to say she wants to adopt her. wish me luck


Answer:
Good Luck!!


Answer:
That is so incredibly stupid. The SPCA branches should network together. I hope she can home and live with your other gp and your house hippos


Answer:
its not looking good for her to come here. my friend went to the halifax spca and had them call down to yarmouth. well the woman in yarmouth said she wasnt letting the pig go to me becaues i wouldnt give her my landlords name and number. thats bull because i did give her the name i just didnt have the number in front of me, i never thought she would ask for it acutally. plus she is still insisting on meeting me before handing over the guinea pig. oh well!! i cant go tomorrow since i need to go to the sawmill for shavings and i have a serious sinus cold right now that isnt any fun to go driving for 6 hrs. oh well if i go to yarmouth on nov 12 then i will pick her up then. if she is still there.


Answer:
Dear Christina~
I understand what you are going through. I had a similar experience earlier this year with an out-of-state SPCA in Arkansas. They were so picky! And to think I had a lot of good references in our local (large scale) SPCA in my home town.
I finally gave up, and just acted like I wasn’t going to be getting this little bird after all. Then I had a close friend of mine just buy the bird being for me, while I paid her back.
I believe a good ending to this would just have your friend buy the pig for you, as her own. Have you thought of doing this?
Other than that I don’t have a lot of advise…It seems to be sometimes that the worse homes are always approved to adopt animals, while the good homes are questioned extensively, lately.
Well good luck! And I hope you find a way around this situation and get that piggy!


Answer:
I had a similar experience with our local Humane Society. AND we used to foster preggy cats for them until we moved into a smaller house. They call US about a hamster- and we go through all this trouble and paperwork and they won't give it to us because we have (quote) 'too high pets to people ratio and too high pet spenditure to income ratio'. What gets me is that they use the same vet we do- and he was the one to recommend calling us about the hamster to begin with! Our first hamster, Cream Soda, was loved by the vet and all his staff- he even made a $50 donation in her name to the COunty HS when she died. He immediately thought of us when the hamster came in. Luckily, my daughter's friend was able to get Chewy, is his name now- a LH banded Cinnamon- so not a total loss- we still get to see him. It really makes me angry with them- after how closely we worked with them in the past and my husband's company donating a computer to them- and they have the nerve to waste our time over some stupid calculation chart some idjit came up with. Seems to me you'd want to give pets to people with pet experience. I don't ask for special treatment- just sensible treatment.
I hope you get your piggy. All that runaround is such a headache. Especially when you know they need the space.


Answer:
wow, i cant believe they woud do something like that ,.,I think it would be kinda hard to get the friend to adopt it now that shes tried to adopt it for you, they would guess it wasnt for her!!
if/when you go down and hes still there then it was meant to be for to own this little piggie!! Good luck


Answer:
You had to know that I would side with the SPCA. Different SPCA's & Humane Societies are NOT affiliated with one another.. so they don't usually take references from them (I know of a few around here that I wouldn't)..
If you had called our shelter, we would have told you the same thing.. come in person for an interview and we'll see. If a person that I had never met before called.. told me they had 50 animals already.. couldn't get in touch with the landlord to OK it.. I'd refuse you too!
Of course, we all know & like you here.. plus we know the lengths that you go to for your pets, so I can understand the others siding with you.. but if you look at it from their side, you might see it differently. You want the guinea pig and they want to find a loving forever home for it.. if they have never met you, they have nothing to go on.
Since our shelter started posting pictures of our adoptable animals on our website, we get calls from people from Montreal, Toronto and further asking us to ship the animal to them (NO) or a friend is in town who will transport it to them.. we always tell them that if the animal is still available when you have time to come yourself then we will consider you..
Sorry, that's probably not the answer you were expecting but..


Answer:
oh well i dont need to work that hard to get animals, good grief ive done enough rescue in my life that i dont need to bend over backwards to prove myself to someone. she could have taken some references and checked them out. if all spcas arent on the same level them maybe we need to take a serious look at them and make them work together. its such a waste of time if halifax spca calls to say that im a good home and they just say no way. and the pig gets to set there at the shelter that much longer shes the one that suffers.


Answer:
Suzoo, you raise valid points, but I am beginning to suspect that you shoot yourself in the foot by being isolated Rescue operations. (not YOU, specifically, but YOU as in any kind of rescue group).
I think that these groups would be more effective at finding good homes for the animals they have taken in, if they networked a little bit. Perhaps have volunteers who are willing to scope out the homes of potential new "parents" so that people who are too far away to get the animal themselves still meet with a person approved by the organization to ensure that the needs of the animal will be met if they stay.
I dunno if that would be the best solution, but surely there is a better way to go about this kind of thing if the common goal of all these Rescue groups is to find permanent loving homes for the animals they have taken in.