Please read ALL of this before applying
Can We Take Your Hound?
The information below will give you guidance on whether or not your dog is potentially a good fit to be accepted into our program.
- Scent Hounds OnlySee the breeds we take below
- Oklahoma FirstOut-of-State Dogs Considered Case by Case
Not sure your dog is a fit?
Before we’re able to consider taking in a dog, we do require a short intake form to be filled out. But if you’re not sure your dog fits the type we’re able to help, you’re welcome to email us at intake@helplesshounds.com with a photo first. We’re happy to take a quick look and let you know if you should fill out the intake form. This email is for breed questions only; we can’t accept intake requests by email.
Oklahoma hounds come first, as the need for our services and resources is abundant within our own state. We can sometimes help hounds from other states, depending on our capacity, available resources, and the dog’s current vetting status. Every out-of-state dog requires a current heartworm test.
If we can’t take your hound into our program, we may still be able to network them on our social media so they get seen and adopted independently of Helpless Hounds, as long as they are altered, vaccinated, and heartworm negative.
We receive an extremely high volume of calls, emails, website inquiries, social media tags, and messages, so we can ONLY accept requests submitted through our online form. We do not take requests by text, phone, email, social media, or any other method.
Should your dog not meet our intake criteria, please visit our Community Resources page for additional resources.
Found a dog?
Found a Stray Hound?
- If you can, post the dog online and take it to a local vet to check for a microchip.
- Legally, we can’t put any dog into our program until its owners have been actively searched for over 10 days.
- If no owner turns up and the dog is a hound, fill out the Intake Request Form at the bottom of this page.
- Not a hound? Our Community Resources page lists other local rescues and animal control contacts.
A rescuer’s guide (and plea)
How to Successfully Surrender a Dog
- Plan ahead. We can rarely take a dog today or tomorrow. The more notice you give us, the more likely we can help.
- Expect to wait. We’re a small team, and our foster homes are almost always full, so it may take weeks.
- Sometimes we have to say no. If we don’t have the space or funds, we can’t take a dog. Please be kind; a “no” is hard on us too.
- Vetting helps us say yes. Any vet care you can cover, such as a heartworm test, vaccines or spay/neuter, makes it much more likely we can take your dog. If you can’t, we understand.
- Tell us everything. Honest details about health and behavior help us find the right foster and adopter. Dogs with a bite history or aggression may not be a fit.
- Can you keep your dog while we find a home? If you can hold onto your dog for a set time while we market them, we can almost always help. Please don’t rehome the dog elsewhere in the meantime.
Read the full guide
1
Plan ahead
The likelihood of a rescue being able to take a dog today or tomorrow is VERY unlikely. If a baby, a move, a life change is coming, and you’re going to need to surrender a dog, the more time you can give a rescue, the more likely they will be able to help you.
2
When you can’t plan ahead
We understand, sometimes situations arise that are out of your control. Understand that most rescues are volunteer-run, by people with full-time jobs and families, and do not have space open and fosters waiting on standby to take dogs immediately. To help, time will be needed, and that might mean weeks.
3
We cannot always help
If the space or funds aren’t available, we may say no. We do everything in our power and then some to help, if and when we can.
We know surrendering a dog is stressful, and it’s hard to hear that we can’t help. Please be kind to the volunteers you talk to. Our “no” hurts us just as much as it hurts you, and Oklahoma needs every rescue it has to keep going.
4
Fully vetted dogs have a much better chance of being accepted
We’re a small nonprofit, and vet care is our biggest expense. We rely on donations, adoption fees and grants to cover it.
Our adoption fee doesn’t even cover basic vetting for a healthy adult dog, and it’s rare for a dog to come in needing only vaccines and a spay or neuter. Vet costs keep rising, and it adds up quickly:
- Heartworm test? $40+
- Preventions? $60+
- Vaccinations? $100+
- Spay/neuter? $200+
- X-rays for injury? $200+
- Surgery or teeth extraction? $300+
- Bloodwork? $400+
- Heartworm positive? $800+
Any vetting you can cover helps us say yes. If you can’t cover anything, we understand and will do our best. Live in the country and had a dog dumped on you? That happens every day, and we’ll still do what we can.
5
Honesty is the BEST policy
We operate on full transparency, the good, bad and the ugly, and it’s an absolute necessity for the successful adoption of a dog if you do too. Knowing all there is to know about a dog helps us find the best foster and the best adopter. Finding out a dog has food aggression on day 1 in a new home could send a dog right back to a rescue, when an adopter armed with the information up front would easily be able to feed separately.
Spots don’t hold for extended periods of time, so when a dog leaves a foster, the next dog generally comes in quickly. There is ALWAYS a waitlist for accepted dogs who we don’t have a foster for yet. When a dog has to come back, there’s a scramble to find where they can go. This is why we have such an extensive application and work really hard to find the best fit for a dog’s new home.
There ARE situations where we cannot take a dog because we will not be able to move it, i.e. aggression or a bite history. A dog that stays in a foster spot for a long time is a spot taken from countless future dogs. Rescues have to weigh those odds and make those tough calls every single day, and it sucks. Weighing a dog and its needs/issues against future ability to help dogs is an impossible task, and yet again, it’s something those in rescue have to do on a regular basis.
6
If you’re willing to foster, we CAN almost certainly help
We will work hard to market your dog, process applications and get him or her into a new home as soon as possible.
That being said, your commitment to us must match ours to you. If you say you can keep the dog for 3 weeks, we will plan with that in mind. If you plan to actively be searching for a home yourself, we may decline taking the dog into our program. Time and effort marketing, processing applications and scheduling meet and greets is wasted if we tell you we found someone and the dog was given away already. Our time is valuable, and respecting that goes a long way, and also helps us to not waste time that could be used on another dog.
7
Be kind
Our hearts break daily for a whole myriad of reasons, and we promise you, we’re truly doing our best.
Read everything above? Thank you!
Intake Request Form
Filling out this form does NOT automatically ensure we will intake your dog.
We will do our best to help with a hound in Oklahoma. Should your dog not meet our intake criteria, please visit our Community Resources page for additional resources.
