March 28, 2024

Where does Fido go?

Durham stresses importance of pet placement if owner dies

If a person has made plans for their family members if anything should happen to them, shouldn’t the same sentiment apply to their beloved pets?

For Joy Durham, manager of Clarke County Animal Shelter, one of her goals is to have people realize the importance of advance planning or placement for pets.

Durham said, last year, the animal shelter got four calls between Clarke, Decatur and Ringgold counties of older people who had lived on farms and were moving to nursing homes or in with relatives. They had many outdoor dogs and cats and no plan in place.

“Like, literally, two of them, there was 135 cats in one and 85 cats in another call,” she said.

Make arrangements

This enforced Durham’s beliefs that family members should make arrangements well in advance for their elderly relative’s pets.

“Because the calls I got were, ‘They’re leaving the property on Friday and we need to have the animals gone by Monday,’” she said. “ … I know sometimes tragic things happen. It does. But, if you’re planning on them going to a nursing home on Friday, it’s not just a Friday decision.”

Currently, at the shelter, there is a 15 year-old-dog, a Chihuahua, who’s owner passed away and didn’t make preparations for the pet to go somewhere.

Now, the question is, how many people in the community are actually going to want to adopt a 15-year-old dog?

“It’s just one of those things where it’s going to be a super hard placement,” Durham said. “In all actuality, we have a hard time even adopting out dogs if their age is past five. Because, people look at, oh well, they’ve only got a couple years left, and they don’t want to.”

According to Durham, there are great “adopters” in the local community who strictly come in to the shelter for older animals each time. Durham and her husband also do “respite care” for older animals that may be dropped off.

Put it in wills

She said she makes it a point to tell people, if they are doing a legal will, it never hurts to include care directions for a family pet. This advice isn’t just for elderly people, it’s for adults of any age because unforeseen accidents do happen.

People are advised to look into wills, pet trusts and pet protection agreements.

Durham stressed the idea that pets are like family members, and should be treated as such.

“That’s one of the issues that I want to work on this year,” she said. “It’s just making people aware, because when we start getting the phone calls, it’s just one of those things where no matter what age they are, you know, if you have pets, it’s a planning situation. It’s like your children.”