The best first step to adopting is to submit an adoption application. The application in no way obligates you to adopt however it does help us get your adoption moving a little quicker.
Our primary placement areas are the western half of Missouri and most of Kansas. We do not make placements in the St. Louis area and we will not make placements beyond Missouri and Kansas. To find an adoption program in your area, please go to www.adopt-a-greyhound.org.
Before you adopt, ALL reading age members of the new adopting household are required to read either Adopting the Racing Greyhound by Cynthia Branigan or Retired Racing Greyhounds for Dummies by Lee Livingood prior to the home visit. Additionally, if there are children in the home that are age 13 or younger, we also require Living with Kids and Dogs…Without Losing Your Mind by Colleen Pelar. We recommend that you try to involve the children in the reading as well.
All of these books can be found at Amazon.com. Our adoption program will receive a donation from your purchase if you order through Amazon Smile and select MoKan Greyhound Adoption as your charity of choice.
Once the required reading is complete, your adoption representative will schedule an educational home visit that ALL members of the family (even roommates and shared custody children) are required to be present for.
If everyone still agrees that a Greyhound is the right fit for the household, the results of your home visit will be shared with the adoption committee for approval. Once approved, your adoption representative will help you determine which dog is the best match for your home.
Especially for first time adopters, we will actively help you select the right dog for your home environment. While we know how easy it is to fall in love with a certain photo or description, we hope that you will trust us to make a good match. While all of our dogs are wonderful, not all of our dogs are right for every home situation. We do not hold specific dogs for potential adopters. If you’ve met a specific dog that you liked, you are welcome to put that information on the application and we will try to find a similar personality type but, we do not promise that particular dog.
The adoption process can be as short as two weeks or as long as six depending on how quickly the reading is completed and how schedules match up. If you have an active application with more than one Greyhound adoption program, we will ask you to finish things with all other programs before we will work with you. Please understand that our program is run entirely by volunteers and most of them work full time jobs and their time is very valuable.
We pride ourselves on not having specific rules about the age of an applicant’s children or whether we will place dogs in homes without a fenced yards. The one rule we will absolutely enforce is that we will not place a Greyhound in a home with an electric or invisible fence.
The adoption fee is $400 which just barely covers (and often doesn’t even cover) our medical costs for the dog.
The animals in our care have had a general health check, been spayed or neutered, microchipped, had a full dental, tested negative for heartworms, have up-to-date vaccinations (rabies and dhlpp) and have been checked for parasites. If the dog tests positive for a parasite (hookworms, whipworms, roundworms, etc.) we will automatically treat them with two rounds of worming medicine. Because of the locations of our foster homes and because our dogs often have adopters waiting for them, we do not typically do a recheck. We recommend that you have your veterinarian recheck them at your first visit. Some parasites can be stubborn and some do not show up in the first fecal exam. We will NEVER knowingly place a dog in a home without disclosing all medical issues that we are aware of but, some medical issues do not present themselves while the dog is in our care.
