Last month, I went to the dentist and had a new hygienist. She was lovely and chatted away as she got set up for my appointment. She asked me what I do for a living and when I told her I run an animal shelter, her eyes lit up. She told me all about her […]
midcoast humane
Posted inTimes Record
Pet Prattle: When the pets we love don’t get adopted
All kinds of pets come through animal shelters. Young, old, large, small and everywhere in between. We see purebred pets, mixed breeds and Heinz 57 types where you couldn’t sort out their lineage without running a DNA profile. We get pets who run the behavior gamut from highly social to independent to genuinely feral. There […]
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Posted inTimes Record
Pet Prattle: What does it mean to be able to ‘afford’ a pet?
When I was 23, I took my parents’ cat to the vet for them. They had a scheduling conflict, but their cat was unwell and I had the day off, so I filled in. As I stood at the front desk to check in, I heard an unearthly yowling coming from the lobby behind me. […]
Posted inLocal & State, Times Record
Tiny but tough: Shelter dog on the lam for months finally safe
After months evading dog authorities, Rollie, a 13-pound mixed breed that became infamous in local Facebook groups during his great caper, was captured in Harpswell on July 28.
Posted inTimes Record
Pet Prattle: Why do shelters have so many pit bulls?
I look nothing like my mother. She had hair so dark brown that it was almost black and deep brown eyes. I have medium brown hair, grey eyes and got none of her features. When I was a toddler, a cashier at the grocery store asked her if she was my babysitter. My brother, however, […]
Posted inTimes Record
Pet Prattle: The dog days of summer
Summer is the busiest season in the animal sheltering world, especially here in Maine. Like our growing season, our breeding season is short; Mother Nature is smart and makes sure babies aren’t born into a Maine winter they won’t survive. However, we are seeing more kittens being born in people’s homes than we are used […]
Posted inTimes Record
Pet Prattle: The hopefulness of pet surrender
One of the earliest owner surrenders of a pet to an animal shelter that I can recall handling was in 2007. A woman had become homeless, and despite loving her young Great Dane deeply, she didn’t think that living in a car was fair to him, so she made the difficult decision to bring him […]
Posted inTimes Record
Pet Prattle: Heads or tails? How to pick a pet
If we accept that flipping a coin is not a reliable way of deciding if a particular pet is right for you and your home, then what is? This is a layered question with a lot of variables. The ASPCA did a study in 2012 on why adopters pick specific pets. Their findings were very […]
Posted inTimes Record
Pet Prattle: On ‘no-kill’ shelters
“Are you a ‘no-kill’ shelter?” Midcoast Humane employees are asked this question on a regular basis in a variety of contexts. We are asked this when we are adoption or admission counseling, out in the community attending events, or even when we go to Hannaford on our way home from work still wearing our Midcoast […]
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