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Rehoming
Rehoming Your Dog: What to Consider
Rehoming a dog is never an easy choice. While many cite reasons like moving, lack of time, or landlord restrictions, the deeper issue is often a weakened bond between dog and owner. Many people face these same challenges and still find ways to keep their dogs, but in some cases, rehoming is the most responsible and compassionate option.
Here are some valid reasons to consider rehoming:
Severe Conflict Between Dogs
Ongoing fights between dogs, especially with large size differences or signs of predatory behavior, can be dangerous. If training and management fail, rehoming may protect both dogs.
Risk to Family or Community
Dogs that pose a threat—through aggression or even size and energy levels—can endanger children, seniors, or others in the home. In these cases, rehoming can prevent injury and improve safety.
Major Life Changes
Serious events like illness, job loss, or relocation to care facilities may make keeping a dog impossible. When no other options exist, rehoming is the right decision.
Health or Behavior Issues Beyond Your Means
Some dogs need expensive medical care or intensive behavior treatment. If these are truly unaffordable or unmanageable, rehoming—or in rare cases, euthanasia—may be the most humane option.
Wrong Fit for the Role
If a dog was adopted for a specific task (e.g. service or working dog) and is not suited for it, rehoming may be necessary to pursue the original goal.
What are my options?
It can be a challenging proposition to rehome a dog, especially one with major health or behavior problems. Here are options to consider when you must give up your dog:
1. Return to the breeder, shelter, or rescue group you acquired them from.
2. Place them with a trusted friend or family member. Well-loved, well-behaved, healthy dogs usually have a circle of admirers who would jump at the chance to adopt.
3. Advertise for someone to adopt them, however this can be risky in this day and age.
4. Take them to a good shelter or rescue. There are thousands of excellent dog adoption services around the country. Many provide medical treatment for at least some of the dogs in their care that owners couldn’t afford. The best have behavior departments or working relationships with qualified professionals to modify difficult behaviors in order to make dogs more likely to succeed in their next, hopefully final, homes. Not everything is fixable, and responsible groups still have to make difficult euthanasia decisions, but your dog might be one they can help.
5. Have them euthanized / put to sleep. As painful as this, it may be the kindest thing you can do if your dog has significant health and/or behavior issues. It may not be realistic to ask someone else to care for such a dog, and she could be abused or neglected in the process. Dying peacefully in the arms of someone who loves her is better than dying neglected in someone’s backyard, or after spending weeks, months, or years in the stressful environment of a shelter.
Of course No. 5 is a very last resort and for us never happens unless under the advise of our vet. There is always another way unless it means the dog will suffer mentally or physically to the point that its general welfare is at stake.
Can LUOSKO help?
If after reading all our information and advice you still feel that re homing your dog is the only way forward, for whatever reason LUOSKO will not judge you. Our advice is simply there to try and help you make a very hard decision a little easier and for you to see all the options.
We appreciate how hard these times can be for families, however like other rescues we struggle sometimes for space to bring dogs into our care. So we have an assessment process in place in order to prioritise dogs needing our help.
We ask that under normal circumstances that you first complete the handover form and return to us as quickly as possible, please ensure you complete the form as honestly as possible as this will help us to help your dog move forward, no matter what the history is it wont affect our decision on bringing your dog into rescue.
When asking us to help, we expect your cooperation and honesty. Once we start the process we encourage people to leave the re homing process to us completely. Our staff are all voluntary and spend time researching options for each dog that is coming in to us, working tirelessly behind the scenes. So when we are told you have re homed your dog elsewhere after you have asked us to help is a huge blow and leads to a lot of wasted resources that could of been used to help other dogs.
As part of our re homing service you will be asked to make a donation to the rescue, this is required upfront when we accept your dog onto our waiting list. We currently ask for a minimum donation of £100 to be sent to the rescue when starting the re homing process. If you would struggle with this one off donation please call us on 08445 881473 to discuss what we can do for you.
Handing my dog over to LUOSKO
If you have got this far, then you have probably exhausted all other avenues and have had to make the decision of handing your dog over to rescue, please follow the instructions below:
Firstly we need you to complete the initial handover form.
On the form there are 2 options:
1. Keeping your dog at home until we have space to bring him/her into our centre
2. Boarding your dog in commercial kennels (assigned by us) until we have space to bring him/her into our centre
Choosing the latter (2) will mean that on top of the handover donation (min £100) you will need to pay for the external boarding kennel fees (reduced rate) until we have space for your dog this is normally around £15.00 per day and payable direct to the boarding kennels., this can work out to be an expensive option and you will be liable for all kennel fees until we bring your dog into our kennels.
YOU MUST choose one of these options or we will not be able to help. Also please bear in mind that if we have to collect your dog from you (depending on distance) this too may be at a cost and may take a few days to organise.
When you complete the form, you will also require a copy of your photo ID, at least 3 pictures of your dog and if possible a few words written by you about your dog, likes, dislikes, attitude, medical issues etc
Once you have submitted the form our rehoming coordinator will be in touch to discuss how we will proceed in helping to rehome your dog.
PLEASE remember that we receive hundreds of requests to help to rehome dogs, unfortunately space is limited and we MUST prioritise each dog individually which means sometimes we cannot take dogs straight away. However we will still do our best to advertise your dog and to try and do as much as we can to help while we wait for a space to become available.
IMPORTANT NOTES
In order for us to bring your dog into rescue we need your full co operation and patience.
We appreciate that your circumstances may be urgent, however we have to rate each dog and circumstances individually and adjust the position on the waiting list accordingly.
WE are a GERMAN SHEPHERD breed specific rescue, therefore we can ONLY accept German Shepherds or crosses thereof.
Due to the current situation forcing a lot of people to make the decision to rehome their dogs we are currently experiencing a high demand of handovers, unfortunately we only have a limited amount of space which means that even after completing our handover form it may take some time before we can physically take your dog.
We are a registered charity, run entirely by volunteers and funded by public donations. This means that we cannot make any exceptions to fees and costs involved in rehoming your dog.
If you will struggle to pay a handover donation or kennel fees (if needed) please let us know upon first enquiry, we may be able to find you an alternative solution.
VETS & EMERGENCY SERVICES
******* IN AN ABSOLUTE DIRE EMERGENCY *******
where the situation surrounding the re homing means that immediate action is required for welfare reasons or to avoid euthanasia please call us immediately on 0300 1211121 (24hrs) to discuss.
Although this service is 24hrs, please remember the person on the end of the phone is still a volunteer and is on-call. They will handle your call to the best of their ability, however depending on timing and circumstances, immediate action may not be an option.