Who will take care of your pets if you can’t?
Make a plan and let people know.
Do you have a plan for your pets?
I am terrified of dying. Actually, I don’t think I will mind being dead. The thing that scares me is, who will take care of my dogs? My five dogs are a bit crazy, and not always easy to take care of. Tino has knocked me down and injured me several times, even though I’m the largest person I know. Tino and Mu are working dogs, and they wouldn’t be able to do their jobs without me. Viktor and Sky are very particular in their routines. I think Fozzie could adjust to life without me, and at 13 pounds, he would be the easiest to care for. Everyone I know already has multiple pets, and I can’t see how they could take on more dogs.
Recently, a UBS supporter died. I didn’t know about it until a couple of weeks after the fact. Her 15-year-old dog wandered off after her death, and has not been seen. If I had known, I would have gone out to search right away. Now, 16 days later, our odds of finding her dog are greatly reduced. I’m sure she would have wanted her dog properly cared for. I don’t know the circumstances of her death, but it would seem she did not have a plan in place for her dog.
I hope that you will make a plan for what would happen to your pets if something should happen to you. I hope you are lucky enough to have a large circle of family and friends that would make sure your dogs and cats are cared for. I tried to research resources to help you with a plan, but most of the sources I found were disturbingly inadequate. This link has few suggestions. Personally, I have no clue where to even start with a plan for my dogs in the event of my untimely death. Although I know plenty of people would want to help, no one would be able to take all five of them. No one I know could even take one of my dogs without serious difficulty and hardship. Somehow, even though it’s not something I want to think about, I need to figure out a plan, just in case. My five dogs are my world. The thought of not being able to take care of them is too scary to think about. I really must figure out an emergency plan.
In the mean time, I need to make sure Tino doesn’t kill me.
A relative agreed (was honored actually) to act as our pack’s guardian in the event both my husband and I are dead. We have it in our wills to leave a sum of funds to her, or to a backup if she cannot perform, to keep our pack together and cared for until they died of natural causes. I figure I’ll get a lawyer to do that with a trust fund for the animals so it couldn’t be misused.
I don’t know if it would play out as I would hope, but it’s the best I could think to do.
It is easy to do. You just have to figure out your plan. Where they will go in the immediate time after your death. We need to make several changes to our will. We hope to get it all updated in 2022. That is our current plan. We will designate SGA to be given custody of our dogs and have a number attached to go towards their care. When Martha's mom died. She had it in her will for us to take care of her pets. Which included a fair amount designated to animal care. We were lucky that when she passed, she only had one cat. But he turned out to be an expensive cat as he got cancer within a year after she died. Since it was her mom's money, she had specified to take care of her cat. We went the full cycle of treatment. He lived another year after the treatments and was happy, and we thought he was healthy. The point is. You just need to set it up. As you say. It would be hard to expect one individual to take care of all 5 dogs. Depending on the extent of your estate. Having a will done by a Lawyer will be $300 - $1,000. If you have a lot of assets. (Besides your most valuable assets. Your Dogs). That can add more cost as you may need to designate where your money goes. If you have someone who thinks they should get most or all of your estate. And you want to make sure they don't get any of it. You need to Name and Exclude them in your will. Or as someone I know did. They left a particular person $1.00 while the rest of their estate was left to their wife and the rest of their kids. I don't claim to be a lawyer. I just have had to go through all this stuff several times. So, figure out what organization you trust to make sure your dogs get the best homes. And have that organization named in your will. You can have pre death paper work done. So they can have that in hand if they need to pick up your dogs from a shelter after your death. Ok that's enough from me.