ADOPTION PROCESS AND APPLICATION
Opening your home and heart to a rescued AMAR Maltese is a very rewarding experience. In order to see if we have a perfect match for you, you will need to completely fill out our adoption application and submit it online. Your information will remain confidential.
While AMAR entertains adoption applications from outside the local area where the dog is being fostered, AMAR will not ship a rescue dog. We usually adopt out to people within a 4-hour max radius. Out of area adoptions are costly for the adoptive family for we feel it is important for all members of a family to meet the rescue dog, before finalizing arrangements. Also, if things don’t work out and the dog needs to come back to us at any time in his/her life, it’s costly for the rescue to arrange transportation back. If a dog has special needs and we can’t find the right nearby family, then we search further. Thus, it can be more difficult to adopt Maltese out of the area where the dog is being fostered.
Here is the adoption process:
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1. We receive your adoption application.
2. We evaluate the answers to see if you are a potential good fit for the requested dog, or any
whom we have in our care.
3. We contact you for a telephone interview. (There might be one or two of these interviews.)
4. We interview the references you listed, personal, veterinarian, groomer. You will need to
notify your vet that you are giving permission to share your information with us.
5. We do a home visit. (The rescue dog may, or may not, accompany us on this visit.)
6. You get to meet the rescue dog. The dog must meet all members of the family, two- and
four-legged, to see how everyone gets along.
7. We make a decision based on the ideal home for the dog. (We do not make our adoption
decisions based on first come, first serve.)
8. The adopting family signs the adoption contract, and pays the adoption fee (see below).
9. The rescue dog is united with his or her forever family.
10. We are there for you and your AMAR adopted dog after they leave us for your home. We
gladly answer any questions, help with ideas about the dog’s transition to your family and
we even provide you with a FREE positive reinforcement training session for you and your
adopted dog with GoodPup professional trainers.
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Please note:
This is not a rapid process. Every AMAR person involved in fostering our dogs, checking references, making home visits, and transportation, is a VOLUNTEER. They perform these tasks in their spare time. Most of them have full or part-time jobs, other pets, and families.
It is possible that there are dogs in our care that aren’t quite ready to be put up for adoption and aren’t listed. One of these dogs might be a good fit for your family. Please submit an adoption application and let us know the qualities you are seeking for your next dog, age, sex, etc.
We prefer NOT to adopt far from where the dog is fostered as mentioned above.
We do not adopt to homes with children, or grandchildren, under the age of 10-years-old, since these are toy breed dogs and can be fragile.
ADOPTION FEE STATEMENT
Adoption fees are charged to cover the expenses of rescuing.  The major cost of incoming dogs is medical care, including veterinary checkups, spaying/neutering, vaccines, heartworm and tickborne disease testing, bloodwork, dentals and microchipping. Maltese with injuries and those needing specialist’s care are covered too. AMAR’s adoption fees do not fully cover the average cost of rescuing and fostering each dog.