Here, at Off the Chain, our goal is to be able to pull long-term residents or the "hard-to-adopt" cases from local high-intake shelters. Once we get them here; we'll give them a decompression period (usually 72 hours) in order to get used to their new surroundings and ensure they're not carrying any diseases from the shelter. Once, that period is over, we begin to integrate them into the pack. From there, we will teach the dog how to be a house dog with manners and obedience in order to make them more adoptable and more attractive to potential adopters. Once one has "graduated" or been adopted; we want to do it all over again. However, lately, we're not getting choices on who gets pulled. The shelters are so very full that we're taking the dogs that we're told are on the euthanasia list. These dogs always take more time because they're almost always scared or has at least one really bad habit that has to be broken before they can be adopted out. We've had many dogs come to us that are heartworm positive because they've never been on any type of preventative. So those pups get the care they need even though we've never had the funds really to cover heartworm treatments. But we get it done so that these babies can get their own forever home!!