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One of the Center’s more unusual residents
I’ve a heartwarming story to share from the rescue with which I volunteer. For the majority of 2010 we cared for Miles, a 7-year-old Bassett Hound. His age, however, made it difficult for us to find him a home. We spent many months watching the adoption of younger dogs around him, but no one wanted Miles.
Finally, we were approached by a unique interested party: the employees from a retirement home. Now we have one of our most special happy endings to share, of Miles the hound that lives amongst the residents at the nursing home. He curls up with them on sofas and trots along on walks around the garden, and every other weekend he goes home with one of the employees.
I was reminded of this story when I read an interesting article today about a retirement home for pets. That’s right, not a human nursing home that also houses individual animals like Miles, but an actual animal retirement home.
Texas A&M University’s Stevenson Companion Animal Life-Care Center was recently profiled by the Houston Chronicle, and the paper provided the back story for the almost 20-year-old center. I first pictured the pet retirement community as a kennel, including the often more limited number of species found boarding there.
No, the Companion Animal Life-Care Center is much more than that. In addition to dogs and cats, it welcomes smaller pets like birds and is even home to a llama. And the digs are much nicer than those found at a kennel as well.
An expansion currently underway at the center will provide screened-in porches and larger rooms for the benefit of its residents. The surrounds are cushy and the animals are for the most part allowed to roam free within them.
The purpose of the center is to provide a home for pets whose owners have died, or for pets with medical conditions that made it difficult for their owners to properly care for them. Residents are a mix of the two, with everything from one-eyed cats to three-legged dogs and full-bodied animals whose owners or their families enrolled them before their owners passed away.
Of course, setting a pet up in a luxury retirement home doesn’t come cheap. Companion Animal Life-Care Center bases its fee on the age of the human owner and the size of the pet. Obviously larger animals require more expensive care, but the human age-based expense needs further explanation.
The center’s fees favor aging owners who are enrolling their pets to ensure that their animals receive quality care once their owners are no longer around. Thus the asked enrollment cost for pets from younger owners is much higher; for example, the endowment needed for a small pet from a 30-39-year-old client is a $10,000 up-front payment or a $100,000 bequest.
Although I’m reeling from cost of the Companion Animal Care Center, I totally understand why its fees are so high. The center is essentially a giant home for a staggering number of animals (the total is currently at 38 but is poised to quickly rise), and so it accrues many expenses.
The Stevenson Companion Animal Life-Care Center isn’t the only of its type in the country, but there aren’t many others either. Soft heart for animals that I am, I sympathize with wanting to make sure one’s pet is taken well care of for the rest of its life. Perhaps if such centers become more common the costs for enrollment will fall.
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*(This image by quinet is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
