Frequently Asked questions

We are now open from 10 am-3 pm on Saturdays and Sundays for walk-in adoptions! 

We also have adoption appointments available every day of the week. We ask that you visit our "View Our Adoptable Pets" tab to browse our available animals and submit an application. Once we have received your application, we will be in contact with any further questions and to set up an appointment. 

Thank you for your cooperation! 

We are located at 6400 Chippewa inside Jewell Animal Hospital. The entrance is on Tamm Avenue.

 All of our adoption fees* include vaccines up to the point of adoption, spay/neuter, microchip, preventatives, blood tests, fecal tests, and de-worming. Vaccines and medical care that are needed after the point of adoption are not included unless otherwise specified. 

*Our puppies are adopted with a $150 Puppy Package which includes heartworm prevention and all vaccine boosters due up to 5 months of age when the boosters are done at Jewell Animal Hospital. 

We do! However, we do not offer shipping and require that an adopter meet with their animal prior to adopting. Therefore, you must be able to come to our facility to adopt. Please note that puppies and kittens need to be brought back to our facility to be spayed or neutered. You can have the procedure done out of state, but we will not reimburse you or adjust your adoption fee, and we do require proof that the procedure was completed.  

Yes! We recommend an initial meet and greet without your dog so you can spend time with the dog you are interested in. If the first meeting goes well, we can schedule a time for a meet and greet with your dog.

Please do not bring your dog during our weekend walk-in hours! If you meet a dog that you like, we will schedule a meet and greet with your dog.

 We do not have a set criteria for adoption requirements, however, we do have a general set of expectations put in place by our adoption staff. 

We wait to spay and neuter our puppies and kittens until they are around 16-20 weeks of age. If they are in this age range, they may be altered before adoption. 

If they are younger than this range, we will schedule your surgery appointment when you adopt. This procedure is included in the adoption fee and is completed by our trusted medical team at Jewell Animal Hospital. 

While our goal is for every adoption to be forever, we understand that sometimes extenuating circumstances lead to the need to return your adopted pet. We hope that we can help you navigate any issues as they come up, which is why we check in with our adopters regularly after adoption and recommend reaching out to us with any concerns. If the pet does ultimately need to be returned, we always take our animals back. 

Depending on our capacity, we may ask you to wait until a kennel has opened up if it is not an emergent situation but our commitment to the animals we adopt is strong even after they leave our care.

We primarily transfer adoptable pets from overcrowded regional shelters to help with their capacity issues and maintain a commitment to our adopted pets if they need to be unfortunately returned. We are sometimes able to accept owner-surrendered pets so we recommend emailing our Adoption Team with information about your pet, pictures, and medical records. If we can accept your pet into Judy's Forgotten Jewells, we do ask for a surrender donation of $200 to help cover some of the costs while your surrendered pet is here and waiting to be adopted.

We do not use the term "no-kill" as it is frequently misunderstood or confused as a shelter that "never euthanizes". As a limited-intake shelter, we are lucky to not have to consider euthanasia for the animals in our care due to time or space limits.  As long as there are no medical or behavioral reasons, they are part of our family until they find their next home, however long that takes. 

As we are housed inside an animal hospital with a veterinarian on-call 24/7, we sometimes take on medical cases with unknown prognoses in hopes of saving them before ultimately electing for euthanasia to minimize their suffering when a grave prognosis is determined. Additionally, we sometimes receive returns of pets adopted as puppies that have shown aggression as adults. We evaluate every animal individually but, in cases of animals we determine to be too dangerous or unpredictable to safely adopt out, we may also elect euthanasia for that pet.

Euthanasia is always an incredibly difficult decision to make, and we only make that decision after much thought and discussion with our veterinarian. We rarely euthanize but are uncomfortable using the term "no-kill" because we believe that it can be misconstrued and, in some cases, used to justify keeping a physically or mentally suffering animal alive simply to avoid making the difficult decision to let them go.

We do not.  It is illegal in the City of St. Louis.

Email is the best way to contact our Adoption Team. Judy's Forgotten Jewells is located inside Jewell Animal Hospital so the phone line is frequently in-use. We respond to all emails within 48 hours. 

We recommend submitting an application if there is a specific pet you are interested in adopting. Sending an email about a specific pet is not considered applying; you will still need to submit an application to be considered to schedule an appointment to adopt.