Thank you for your interest in adopting “Fester.” Please fill out the application below to help us determine whether you are a good fit.
Provide contact information for your veterinarian. If you are not registered with a vet’s office, your application will be discarded unread.
Do you currently have pets or have you recently had pets? If so, your application will be discarded unread.
You may be wondering about the apparent paradoxical nature of the first two questions. The correct answer would have been that you posed as an animal for several years in order to establish a relationship with a veterinary clinic and a favorable rapport with the office staff.
Have you ever returned a library book late? Please explain at length below.
Have you ever been dumped? Provide the relevant contact information, so that we may learn the circumstances of this interpersonal failure.
Did you lie about the library book? Please be aware that we will be contacting your elementary-school librarian, whom you last saw in 1997. Please also be aware that, though you may go back and change any answers on this form, we will know.
Have you ever bought a bag of salad mix and let it rot instead of eating it?
Two years ago, at a networking event, when Tara was telling the group about her new Jack Russell terrier, did you cut her off to talk about your own bullshit? Why did you do this? What is wrong with you?
Are you now remembering other times when you interrupted people to make inane comments? Any personality flaws will be noted, and may cause us to reëxamine your documents. We have a high volume of applicants for each dog—applicants with superior math skills and glossy hair, applicants whose friends regard them more highly than yours do you. Our Furever Homes applicant-acceptance rate is lower than one per cent.
Are you overthinking the previous question? A tendency toward introspection is not necessarily a quality that we look for in a prospective dog owner.
We are also wary of applicants who are not introspective enough. We will know the correct level of self-reflection when we see it. So will our dogs.
Have you ever said “Nice, I’ll check that out!” with the absolute knowledge that you will not, at any point, check that thing out?
Were you once involved in a scheme to genetically modify dogs so that they could play tennis, by breeding them to eventually have one front paw replaced by a hairy tennis racquet?
Are you now frantically digging through your files, scouring old correspondence, to discover how we could possibly know about the Tennis Dogs Project?
Do you think that it was Tara who tipped us off? Do you think that maybe you shouldn’t have approached her with that proposition regarding her Jack Russell terrier, then claimed it was a joke?
Do you think that you’re “funny”?
Please note that the processing of submitted applications will take as long as it needs to take, and that we will not be responding to failed applicants. We emphatically do not accept simultaneous applications—if you are considering applying to adopt a dog from a different rescue organization, we will know.
The only way for you to learn the outcome of your application is to refresh our page repeatedly, while gazing at Fester’s fluffy face—his expression of longing, his lovable underbite—and developing an irrepressible attachment to the idea of growing old with Fester by your side, until, at last, his profile vanishes from the site. At this point, you are free to begin your search all over again.
Best of luck!
