Re-Homing Your Animal

If you need help re-homing your cat, dog, guinea pig or rabbit please refer to the ‘CONTACT’ page where you will find the appropriate telephone number or email address.

The first part of bringing an animal into foster care will involve us having a telephone discussion with you concerning the animal you wish us to care for and the circumstances surrounding the need. All of the information we obtain from you is held in strictest confidence.

After an initial telephone conversation, where dogs are concerned, we will visit your home to carry out a risk assessment of the animal in question. This is necessary for two reasons; our foster carers have varying experience levels and differing home environments so we need to be sure of an animal’s behavioural needs and requirements before placing them in a private home in order to protect the animal and the carer.

If we have available space we will make arrangements to bring the animal into care. On some occasions we will be unable to take your animal immediately depending on the vacancies we have at the time but we will be able to give you an estimate of how long you may need to wait.

Sometimes it is not possible for us to receive an animal into our care and this may include;

• No vacancies
• Existing medical conditions or physical ailments that are life threatening
• Lack of the specialist management required for some behaviours such as resource guarding in a dog.

We will do our best to accommodate your needs and always have alternative recommended rescue shelters that you may wish to try if we are unable to help you at the time or other RSPCA regional branches who may be able to assist. This information can be found on the ‘CONTACT’ page.

What We Need From You

When we collect your animal you will be asked to provide any equipment that belongs to the animal such as a cage, bed, toys, lead, collar and medications etc so we can do everything to ensure a smooth, stress free transition for the animal. From the animal’s point of view the fewer changes to the environment the better.

Once you have surrendered your animal to the branch becomes under the legal ownership of the RSPCA so all decisions about its care, welfare and future are made by the charity.