Best Friends Pet Adoption Center — Attraction in New York

I wanted to share my horrible foster experience with Best Friends, over which I'm still grieving over, and I can't even imagine what the dog must be feeling.

Sometime around December last year, as a test drive to see what life would be like with a dog, I signed up to be a foster for Best Friends. It was surprising how easy it was, just a video session, and you're good to go. First it took forever to get a response from them, then the scheduling was a nightmare. They sometimes would call or write back 3 times to change when I need to pick the pups up or drop them off, and always at times that I told them would be inconvenient for me. I went along with it, thinking maybe it was just disorganized because it's run by overwhelmed volunteers.

Then I picked up 2 puppies, Trevor and Tulip (brown and black dog, respectively). They said these two are siblings and I'll leave you to be the judge of that. It is also highly suspicious as there was another foster request for a basenji mix puppy that did not receive any takers, and I saw another puppy pair with again dissimilar looking siblings, where the black puppy is a splitting image of Tulip. I told them that these two puppies only fight with each other and it is a bad idea to keep them together. But they were very firm on always having foster parents keeps puppies in twos.

Regardless, this is how I came to meet Tulip, the sweetest and cutest puppy I've ever met. Everyone of my friends and coworkers that have met her told me they've thought about her after she's gone. She is quiet, well-behaved, and mild-tempered (with everyone that plays with her and pats her). This is why despite the fact that she'll grow to be a massive dog, I put in an adoption request for her.

Then the foster org acted up again. I had to return the pups to fly home for Christmas break. They told me I couldn't foster the pups back after the girl that fostered here over Christmas returned her. And the latest foster parent gets first priority in the adoption request, so I'd have to wait until she is up for adoption, which just needed the spay surgery. But then on the day of the spay surgery news broke out that both puppies have been tested positive for distemper and need to be re-quarantined. Which I found suspicious again, because the distemper tests came back clean under my foster so did they catch it while at the shelter?

Regardless, by the time Tulip was ready for adoption it was already 2 months after I fostered her. The correspondent told me that she's sorry but the latest foster family has decided to take her (while going on vacation, like I did). I was relieved and was planning on getting a puppy elsewhere. Then she called me 2 days later to say that the other foster family changed their mind and that she's available the next day. Yes I understood by that point that this was a power play but a bunch of disgruntled and underpaid staff deciding to make themselves feel more important at the expense of the puppies, but who cares as long as Tulip is okay? Then came Tulip, two months later and twice as big, and no longer trusting of humans. She now has nightmares when she sleeps :(, shaking and quickened breathing. And she growls at my friends that used to hold her. What kind of people abuse cute trusting puppies, and sign up to foster them :(?

Tulip now had separation anxiety (she howls whenever I leave the room) and several behavioral issues and also didn't listen to me anymore. I'm sharing the before and after photo to distinguish the loss of hope and optimism in the dog's eyes that is heart breaking. I have my faults at dog rearing too, but a foster organization is supposed to save dogs from abusive situations and not sending them into traumatizing situations.

I wanted to share my traumatizing experience with people who shame others for going to breeders and not adopting: perhaps do something to fix the shelter pipeline issue first, so they are not run like cheap options for folks who can't afford...

It has taken me almost a week to be able to even compose myself to write this review – my family & I were so traumatized last Sunday. We adopted a kitten on June 30, she was soo quiet & cute –allegedly she’d just been spayed, but we were told she was in great health -although she looked quite lethargic. The volunbteer said she’d recover & get acclimated to our home within a few weeks. But within a few days – I knew something was wrong. She wasn’t coming out from under the bed -she was only eating a little, and she wasn’t using her litter box – we have 2 kids and 2 other cats, so she was surrounded by love and care 24/7.

July 9 I made the first of what would become many attempts at contacting the Shelter, only receiving ONE response throughout the month we had her.She became more & more reclusive – but the shelter said it was because of her spay surgery – and that she needed to acclimatize to our home – They NEVER recommended a vet – so I began buying special foods, nutrients, everything I could to try and help.The shelter said they’d follow up on her progress, but never did.Despite my efforts, she began loosing more weight (she was skinny to begin with)-she looked gaunt from day one. I sent 5 emails over the course of the month, expressing my concerns, her not eating, loosing weight, her stool was not normal, ect -even asking if they had a vet they’d recommend-the shelters response was a joke-telling me to leave her isolated so that she’d acclimatize easier to our home-& to leave more litterboxes around the room.We even bought a camera to monitor her movements day&night. HOWEVER-Last Sunday we left the house in the morning and when I came back she was lying in the kitchen practically fainted, when I took her in my lap she started to convulse and couldn't breathe-I could barely scream to my husband I was soo shocked. We raced to the emergency vet hospital-only to watch as the vet worked on her limp body for 2 hours-only to tell us she’d been sick for a long time-she had organ failure & infections-she should have come in months ago.She was suffering & it was better to humanely let her go.We had 10 minutes to say goodbye to a kitten that we had fell in love with. It was the WORST DAY of my LIFE! It was even worse having to tell my children, my daughter is still devastated! Ontop of having to pay 1300 at the vet only to have to watch her die! most people seek adoption to give a home with love and safety to animals, never imagining that they would adopt out to us a sick cat! Only to die 4 weeks later of what could have been prevented with the bare minimum of care! This place simply took away my kitten's chance to live, she was only 3 years old,what vet did you get to give her a clean bill of health? She was sickly when we got her, a moron could have seen this!The contract we were given was the biggest joke-not being responsible for adopting out a sick animal?!? How could you even think to do that and then hide behind this joke of a contract? Total negligence. Taking all responsibility off the shelter – when in this case it was clearly the shelters negligence is sinful!what kind ofworld do we live in where this can happen?Shelters are supposed to PROTECT animals, not neglect them!Where’s the clause that protects adopters from their psychological trauma of having to see a neglected animal suffer and die after only a few weeks? I've been home from work for 2 days bc I can't sleep- I keep remembering her looking at me, and I keep remembering her in the little room waiting to be sacrificed.I can't sleep since Sunday,I can't eat, imagine what you did with my mental health, with the mental health of my children ?? How many animals are still going out sick to people? I posted a picture – this is the image burned into my mind now. And my kids! You should be ashamed of yourself. Who will help with our trauma? Who will protect this from happening to...

Firstly I adopted my cat several months ago around May. I am also a biracial person of color. There was a lady there who seemed very headstrong to the point it made me uncomfortable (I won’t mention her name here.) She was uninterested in any small talk about the cat or the other animals, and acted as if my questions were bothersome. She even tried to convince me not to get a cat after I expressed that originally I wanted a kitten telling me “don’t get the cat because you feel bad for it.”

As if my main purpose for getting her after thinking about it was because I felt pity or something. She also said it wasn’t a great idea because we eventually may want a kitten in the future later on. This made me very uncomfortable, because how she assumed she knew my reasoning for wanting to adopt a pet and acted as if I weren’t knowledgeable about cat ownership.

My partner who looks white got a more cheerful persona from her. She was less headstrong with him and seemed to actually engage with him more vs treating me like I was a kid who didn’t know what I was doing. She even focused on talking to him more and would sometimes ignore me to where I would have to repeat myself.

Not only do I believe that I was treated differently due to my skin complexion, but I also feel that had it not been for my partner we wouldn’t have been able to adopt our adorable cat due to me not looking “white”.

Secondly the young man who finally helped us was amazing and actually genuinely seemed to care for the animals, not only did he make small talk about his own pets, but he seemed passionate about working here.

Now down to my other issue. They never told us that the cat was sick. We adopted her and we were told she was on medicine for pain due to her getting spayed. The moment we walked out she already had some mild discharge in her eyes which we didn’t think was anything because we were told she was alright and cleared for adoption.

As soon as we got home she was sneezing with snot spraying everywhere with even more discharge in her eyes as if she was cleaned up before she was placed on display for adoption to make it seem like she was ok. Even though we isolated her as soon as we saw signs of her being sick it was already too late. She was around the other cats and all of our things. We couldn’t get a vet appointment until two days later and when we finally got her to them they told us she had some form of conjunctivitis and a respiratory infection.

Not only did I have to pay a ton of money for the vet and medicine, but a few days later she got me and my 6 year old sick as well. Both of us had gotten conjunctivitis similar to our new cat and both of us began to have respiratory issues. While my daughter is fine now, I am still battling it due to having asthma.

Fast forward to today 7/6/24 and both of my other cats despite separating them are sick now as well. So thank you not only do I have to fork over 100s of dollars to make sure all my cats are fine and healthy due to you guys not telling me about the adopted one being sick, but I also had to take several trips to the hospital for myself and my child causing her to miss school. Being sick has also caused me to have breathing difficulties.

We love our new cat, the entire family does, and so do our other cats. She loves it here as well, however her sickness should have been handled by you guys before clearing her for adoption or at least a warning would have been nice so that I could have immediately isolated her away from the other animals until we were able to...