Adoptability Criteria
Our vision is a world in which every dog who is able to thrive as a companion pet has a stable, long term and loving home where they are appreciated for the individual that they are.
To make our vision a reality, Save One Soul is steadfast in our mission to provide temporary foster homes and find permanent adoptive homes for homeless and at-risk behaviorally and medically sound companion pet dogs. Our resources are focused on the short term daily care dogs require while in our program, and identifying and supporting successful permanent home matches for them. While we work hard to provide an adoption outcome for each dog we take into our care, humane euthanasia is utilized in the rare situations where one of our dogs is irredeemably suffering or is a danger to people or other animals.
We are passionate about saving as many lives as possible as we know the need is great. Adoptability Criteria informs the kind of dog behaviors we will and will not place into adoptive homes. Using an Adoptability Criteria helps us maximize the good we can do with our resources, and plan the best pathway forward for each dog in our program while considering each individual situation with great care. We gather information about each dog over time and from multiple sources (staff, foster placements, previous guardians, volunteers, dog professionals, etc.), and evaluate each dog on a case-by-case basis. We believe that it is our responsibility – to our community, to ourselves and to all the dogs who need our help (today and tomorrow) – to help each individual dog in the ways that we’re able to and to make the hard decisions that are at times necessary to ensure the wellbeing of the animals in
our care as well as our community.
To the above end, in general, SOS will not place dogs who:
- Have one or more damaging bite towards humans per Dunbar bite scale.
- Do not show warning signs before they attempt to bite.
- Have a damaging bite history to another dog due to aggression.
- Demonstrate seek-and-destroy aggressive drive towards other companion pets.
- Cannot be safely handled by average SOS volunteers due to aggressive behaviors.
- Offensive aggression towards humans.
- Stalk children in a predatory manner.
- Show uninterruptible aggression towards other dogs.
- Exhibit fear/anxiety/stress not relieved by reasonable efforts of environmental changes, behavior medications, and/or behavior modification. Weekly progress needs to be seen such that we can confidently predict that the dog will achieve a sustainable good QOL within a reasonable amount of time that is transferrable to a variety of other homes.
- Require considerable management in order to be successful in a home or whose caregivers will need to significantly change their lives to manage the dog in the home.