Cairn Rescue USA is an all-volunteer, not-for-profit organization dedicated to rescuing, rehabilitating and re-homing purebred Cairn Terriers and mostly-Cairn mixes. We are incorporated in New York, but we rescue Cairns nationwide. Our Petfinder listings are organized by region: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest and West.
Our rescue Cairns come from animal shelters and humane societies; others are released to us by their owners due to changes in family circumstances or to the owners realizing that a Cairn is not a good match for them; still others come from puppy mills and backyard breeders where they have been used as breeding stock. Our rescue Cairns are spayed/neutered, tested and if necessary, treated, for heartworm and other parasites, and brought up-to-date on their inoculations prior to their placement in loving forever homes.
We do NOT have a shelter or facility but depend instead on a wonderful network of foster homes throughout the United States who under our officers' guidance evaluate and rehabilitate our rescue Cairns until they are ready for placement. Watch here a video about our fostering operations:
We are committed to rescuing as many Cairns as our funding and number of foster homes and volunteers will permit.
To become a foster home and help us save more Cairns, please see our Foster page. No experience is necessary. To see a list of our available Cairns by state, please see Cairns For Adoption. You can also help us by volunteering to transport a rescue Cairn, making a tax-deductible donation of cash, Cairn items or other crafts that we can auction on Ebay to raise funds, participating in our eBay auctions, doing your online shopping through our affiliate program links, purchasing grooming tools for your cairn at our Curiosity Shoppe, becoming a member of CRUSA, participating in our rescue working list, sponsoring a senior dog through our Godparent Program, sponsoring a cairn with a medical condition that requires extraordinary veterinary care through our Healing Angel Program or sponsoring Buddy Program.
To make a tax deductible donation to CRUSA please click here (CRUSA is a 501c3 registered charity and its Forms 990 filed with the IRS and Forms CHAR 500 filed with New York state are all available on our website and the Forms 990 are also available at guidestar.org):
You can also help us by volunteering to transport a rescue Cairn, making a tax-deductible donation of cash, Cairn items or other crafts that we can auction on Ebay to raise funds, participating in our eBay auctions, doing your online shopping through our affiliate program links, purchasing grooming tools for your cairn at our Curiosity Shoppe, becoming a member of CRUSA, participating in our rescue working list, sponsoring a senior dog through our Godparent Program, sponsoring a cairn with a medical condition that requires extraordinary veterinary care through our Healing Angel Program or sponsoring Buddy Program.
How Our Adoption Process Works
Adopting a dog is a lifetime commitment. You must be prepared to keep your dog if you move or if your family grows, and nurse it back to health if it gets ill or needs surgery. You must also be prepared and willing to work with your Cairn while it adjusts to your home and give it TIME, PATIENCE, UNDERSTANDING and LOVE to help it succeed in its new environment. No dog is perfect, just like no human is perfect, but any adopter of a rescue Cairn who has been through the adjustment period can tell you that the effort is well worth it and pays off. We want every adoption to be a successful one and will work with you and answer your questions before and after the adoption to achieve that goal, so if you are willing to make that lifetime commitment to one of our rescue Cairns, please visit our website to learn how our adoption process works. You should also review our Adoption Contract to confirm that you are willing and able to abide by its terms.
You should also know that if you are approved to adopt one of our rescue cairns, you will be asked to make a tax-deductible donation to Cairn Rescue USA at the time you take possession of your Cairn. These donations help us defray shelter fees and other costs paid to procure our rescue Cairns, the cost of transporting them to our foster homes, the costs of providing them with food and appropriate veterinary care, including spay/neuter, immunizations, heartworm testing and prevention, and other medical and/or grooming needs as are required by the particular dogs in our program. For purebred Cairns under 1 year old we ask for a donation of $350; for purebred Cairns between 1 and 3 years old, we ask for a donation of $300; for purebred Cairns between 4 and 7 years old, we ask for a donation of $250; for purebred Cairns between 8 and 10 years old, we ask for a donation of $200; and for purebred Cairns over 10 years old, we ask for a donation of $125. For Cairn mixes up to 10 years, the requested adoption donation is $150 and for those over 10 years it is $125. For Cairns that have long-term health issues, the requested adoption donation may be reduced based on the care and medications that the Cairn will require post-adoption. For Cairns under 6 months of age, which are not altered at the time of adoption, we also require a $250 spay/neuter deposit, which is FULLY refundable upon presentation and verification of a spay/neuter certificate. In some states we are able to procure pediatric neuters for our puppies and if the puppy that you are adopting has had one, we ask for an additional donation of $50 to help offset a portion of the cost that we incur for the procedure. Please note that adoption donations do not constitute purchase monies paid for the rescue dog, and therefore are not refundable in the event that you decide to return
You should know also that we will acknowledge receipt of your application and review it but will not contact your references until you have been matched to a dog. The matching process is not first-come, first-served. Rather we seek to match each of our dogs with the best possible home for its needs. For that reason it may take us one day to match you to a dog in our program or it may take us a couple of months, depending on how flexible you are as to the Cairn's age, sex, etc., and the dogs that are available in your area at the time. You can also increase your chances of getting a rescue Cairn from CRUSA by checking our website regularly for new dogs after you complete and submit your online application and letting us know if one of them interests you. We rarely adopt dogs to families with children under the age of 7 years. The reasons for our policy are explained on our website.Once matched, the process moves quickly and because we process only one application per dog at a time, the applicant need not fear losing the dog to someone else, provided his/her reference check, home visit and foster home impression all go well. Unlike other programs, ours is not a race to the finish line. The biggest delays after being matched to a dog tend to be caused by references not being available and the scheduling of the home visit.
We do NOT have a shelter or facility but you can visit our website to view our available dogs page and find out how you can help us rescue more cairns in need!
