Canine Lifeline

Canine Lifeline is an all-volunteer, foster-based rescue that does nothave a shelter to visit. Our adoptable dogs are posted online and wereceive and review online applications to find the home best suited foreach of our dogs. Meet and greets are scheduled by appointment withdesignated approved applicants at a neutral venue.*** applied to adopt one of our rescue dogs named *** on May17. Our due diligence in processing an application initially involvescontacting the applicant’s vet clinic to obtain a reference should theapplicant currently own a dog or have had a dog within the past fiveyears. We did obtain a positive reference from Ms.’s vet andinformed her of such on May 18, letting her know that we could schedulea meet with *** on Tuesday, May 19, with assurances from her that if* proved to be a good match, she would be ready to adopt and take herhome. Her initial response was “Yes, absolutely,” however, she thenequivocated indicating that she would need to secure transportation tothe meet venue. She subsequently informed us that she was not able toget a ride for the stated meet. We had a number of other approvedapplications for *** so we moved forward with scheduling a meet for*** with another applicant on Tuesday. Ms. then emailed asking ifwe might be able to postpone the meet and hold *** until Saturday, May23 when a friend might be able to drive her to the location of the meet. We never discussed a Saturday meet with her or agreed to hold *** forher beyond the offer of the Tuesday meet. As she stated, we did say inan email that we would call her to discuss possible options but at notime did we promise Ms. that we would hold *** specifically forher in the event that she could find transportation to the meet andgreet venue. Once the other approved applicant had met and adopted ***,we promptly emailed Ms. to let her know that *** had found a goodhome and asked her to visit our website and see if there were other dogsof interest. We were willing to work with Ms. to help her find adog but, at the same time, we could not hold *** for her when we hadanother approved family ready to give *** a wonderful home.Please be aware that we are an all-volunteer, non-profit committed torescuing and saving dogs from euthanasia at county dog shelters. We havedone so since 2009 and continue to do so with close to 5,000 dogsadopted. Our primary mission is to find good home for the dogs in ourfoster care. We effectively screen and attempt to communicate with thosewho apply for our dogs, but we cannot cater to all their specific needs.We cannot reserve a dog for someone, like Ms., who is tentativeabout the possibility of meeting a dog of interest. If we operated onthe basis, it would be completely obstructive to our mission.We understand that these are difficult times during the COVID-19pandemic. We are sensitive that it must be especially trying andstressful for those who are house-bound with transportation challenges.We are certainly sorry that Ms. has experienced so much distress inthis process. But we trust that as someone who loves dogs, she willappreciate and understand our efforts in making certain that a dog findsthe home that she or he deserves with so many homeless dogs in need atarea rescues and shelters.