Our Guiding Principles

_Dogs and cats come to Silver Rescue for special care from a variety of places. Some are street dogs and cats, some face death in kill shelters and others escape abusive or neglectful homes or are surrendered by families unable to care for them. Once they find sanctuary here, we do everything we can to make sure nothing bad will ever happen to them again. Some of them are soon ready to go to carefully screened forever homes with loving families. Others find lifetime care here.

1. We make decisions for the animals based on what is best for them – not for financial reasons or for our convenience.
2. We seek to prevent suffering as well as to alleviate it by incorporating spay/neuter, humane education, and dialogue with the public into our rescue efforts.
3. We strive to promote cooperation in the animal advocacy community and support the ethical, animal-focused efforts of others even when we disagree with individual methods.
4. We limit the number of animals in our care to those for whom we can responsibly provide - physically, emotionally, and financially – regardless of pressing needs of other animals in our community.
5. We seek balance and order in our volunteer, personal, professional and financial lives to protect our physical and emotional health and thus meet our commitments to the animals in our care.
6. We find appropriate placements as soon as possible for animals deemed adoptable. The availability of these animals is advertised on the Internet and in other appropriate ways to avoid delay in the animals’ starting their new lives.
7. We provide medical care, socialization, training, behavior modification or other interventions to help unadoptable animals become adoptable. Lifelong sanctuary is provided to those that remain unadoptable.
8. We formally evaluate the adoptability of each animal at least every six months, though status may be changed at any time at the sole discretion of Silver Rescue and based solely on the needs of the animals.
9. We consider euthanasia only to relieve suffering when other means have been exhausted. We provide comfort and care to allow sick and aging animal to die in familiar surroundings when possible.