The animals
The will is read too late to help the dog
Somebody dies on a Tuesday. There’s a dog in the house and he needs feeding that evening. The will names who gets him, the will is with an attorney, and nobody will read it for two weeks.
That gap is how animals end up in shelters after a death, out of homes where somebody had made a plan.
The paperwork moves in weeks and the dog needs feeding tonight.
The days before anybody reads it
A will gets read once it is found and the attorney has time, which is usually a week or two after the death.
The dog was last fed the evening before.
In between there are a few days when the only question is who has a key and who can drive over. No document answers that, because no document is being read yet.
What the neighbor needs to know tonight
Whether there is an animal in the house at all. People forget to say, and a cat who stays upstairs is invisible to anybody who has not been told.
Where the food is kept and how much he gets. Any medicine, and whether it goes in with the evening meal.
The vet’s name, because the first weeks after an upheaval are when an old animal gets ill.
Ask the person first
“She’ll take him” is very often news to her.
People settle it in their own head, naming a daughter or a neighbor or an old friend, and never mention it. The named person finds out at the worst possible moment, in front of relatives, with the dog in the room.
A five-minute conversation years earlier settles it. It’s worth naming a second person too, because the first may have moved, or had a baby, or acquired a cat who would take a dim view.
Who pays for him
An old dog can cost a great deal. Somebody may be glad to take him and quietly unable to afford him, and a funeral is a bad place to raise it.
All fifty states and the District of Columbia allow a pet trust, which sets money aside for an animal’s care and names somebody to manage it. Minnesota was the last to pass one, in 2016.
Whether it suits you is a question for somebody qualified. Knowing it exists, and what it is called, is the part you can do tonight.
The things that are in no document
He is frightened of the vacuum cleaner. Half a can morning and evening is enough. The tablet gets crushed into the evening one. He has been to the same vet for nine years and is calm there and nowhere else.
None of that is in the will, and it is most of what decides whether he stays.
A family who gives a dog up after a month is usually not a family who did anything wrong. They were handed a nervous animal and no instructions.
Sources
Who has agreed to take him, and what he needs in the evening. Worth writing down while you can still ask them. Here is a finished binder, free to read: the example binder.