As I just mentioned it is not an exact science but they do what they can.
If they ensure a dog that needs lots of running around goes to a home where it can do that then it is less likely the dog will be inside and taking its energy out on the people’s furniture and shoes (which then may see them chaining the dog up outside).
If they ensure people understand the financial realities of owning a dog there is less chance a new owner will be surprised by the cost and then react badly.
There are no guarantees but a little due diligence up front can prevent some easily avoidable problems down the road.
If you just let people plop down some cash and walk out with whatever grabs their fancy the potential things will go sour increase.
Their process really is not all that onerous and the would-be owner gets a fantastic deal compared to the cost from a pet store or breeder. You also get other benefits from these folk (they do temperament testing which while not perfect helps to assess a dog’s personality and where they might best fit).
Michael Vick, his multi-million dollar contract and his gigantic mansion with plenty of curtilage called from 2007. They’d like their stupidity back, thanks.
You never answered the question, btw. Is it really your contention that putting a dog into a household with less-than-perfect conditions is tortuous and worse than death?
I know you don’t see it. You clearly don’t see a lot of things - Like how gassing a dog is not better than putting it in a home where it may not always get its recommended daily exercise.
I am not biting because you are laying down a “gotcha”. Define you less-than-perfect conditions first.
I cannot speak for all shelters but the Anti Cruelty Society in Chicago is a no kill* shelter. If they do not give you a dog because they think it is a bad fit they hang onto the dog till they find it a better home.
I am guessing city animal pounds which do kill are not fussy about prospective owners.
*[sub]They do euthanize animals but only for specific reasons which most times are either the animal is too sick/injured or the animal is dangerously aggressive and deemed not suitable for adoption. Note for aggressive dogs they do try to work with them and see if they can be saved but that does not always happen.[/sub]
If an apartment dweller works 12-16 hours a day, either regularly or even semi regularly, has a small apartment, and doesn’t have easy access to a place to exercise a dog, that person is NOT the ideal owner of a Jack Russell Terrier, for instance. Those dogs are small, but they need a lot of attention and discipline.
I’m not sure that I’d get a dog right after a baby was born, either. New parents need to focus on the baby, and even the very best dog in the world will need some extra attention when it gets adopted into a new home. The baby won’t notice that there’s a dog until it’s a few months old, at least. And the child needs to learn not to pull the dog’s ears and tail, or hit the dog, etc. This is for the good of the child as well as the dog.
You’ll note I said “could be” and later mentioned it depends which you deemed “backpedaling”. I asked you to define the level of mistreatment. You haven’t preferring instead to make shit up.
When you’re in a hole you really should stop digging.
dipshit, we’re not talking about mistreatment. we’re talking about getting really fucking nosy into an adopter’s bidness with questions which have nothing to do with propensity for abuse. you respond claiming that not asking those questions, thus not making sure that the dog’s minimum requirements are met, such as keeping lassie in an apartment, is tantamount torture and then suggested that the dog is better off dead.
I hope I’m not the only one who ‘rescues’ pets this way, but what about a Lot Puppy? You know, those people who give away free pets out of the back of a truck in some parking lot somewhere. No hoops to jump at all and the pet will probably end up in a shelter if they can’t get rid of them fast enough. My best dog ever came from one of those and I’d not hesitate to do the same thing again.
I understand the importance of the surveys is finding a good fit, and making sure an owner is not going to be abusive before allowing him to adopt a dog. My sister’s dog is a 1-year-old rescue who was chained up outside all but permanently, in 90 degree weather with no water, before one of his neighbors decided he’d seen enough and called the shelter. Family who’d owned him seemed nice enough apparently, but they’d lost interest in him. I could see, in his situation, he might have been better off being gassed than put in that home.
However. Does it sound like sending a dog to live in for example Cowboy Moe’s home would be a fate worse than death? He already owns a dog. Is that dog happy and healthy? If so, I think you have your minimum requirements for most breeds right there. If it were me, personally, I would be insulted by the idea that a new animal would be better off being gassed than adopted by me. And to be frank, that’s kind of how your first reply to Rumor Watkins came off.
I think of craigslist as the modern day version of this.
I can understand why some animal rescue volunteers become very picky about who they want to adopt their animals. They’ve invested a lot emotionally and often financially into those animals. However, I think it’s important to remember that just like there is no one right way to parent a child, there is no one right way to live with a dog.
If someone does anything to indicate they plan to use the dog as dogfighting bait or something else horrible of course they have no business adopting, but there are a lot of less than perfect owners who love their dogs and can provide a happy life for a homeless pooch.
Do most of the rescue shelters at least give you a reason why you are rejected? For example, it would piss me off if I was rejected for being a Republican or maybe an avid hunter or something else completely irrelevant to being a good adopter.
I know I’m maybe exaggerating but I would not be surprised if it happened.
Interesting. I worked in a fairly common kind of shelter for seven years: it was a humane-society-run shelter that contracted with the city and county to provide animal control services. Prior to the society’s contract, the shelter was literally staffed by prison inmates on work release. Animals were “euthanized” by putting them all in a room, backing a truck up to the room, and filling the room with exhaust until they all choked to death. Animals weren’t always caged separately, so small dogs wouldn’t get to eat, and during euthanasia would sometimes be mauled to death by panicking larger dogs. It was a real treat of a place.
Our humane society came in and got extensive recommendations from HSUS for how to improve the shelter. They just completed a multi-million dollar new animal shelter, and I believe they’re working under a huge grant to drastically reduce euthanasia in our community.
It was an open-access shelter, but it had a very high interest in increasing adoptions. We spent a tremendous amount of time doing that.
As for the OP, it does sound excessive to me. My recommendation, though, isn’t to go to breeders: rather, shop around at different shelters in your community. I recommend that to anyone looking to adopt. In our community, we had several adoption agencies. We were, IMO, awesome. There was a network of foster caregivers that was also very good, although they did a little less due diligence, I think. There was a tiny group run by a bitter alcoholic lunatic who was probably a hoarder and who hated us for getting all the good press. There was a group investigated several times on felony animal abuse charges for the appalling disease, starvation, and cruelty at their facility. And that’s just in one relatively small county.
So shop around; find a shelter who takes good care of their animals, practices enough due diligence but not too much, and has animals you like.
Edit: also, one reason shelters, especially primary shelters for a community, can be picky is that they are where the animals end up if the adoption doesn’t take. A returned animal has an extremely low re-adoption rate, for a variety of reasons. They may be wanting to prevent any chance of a failed adoption.
I want to point out, again, that the groups that have the most strict and noisiest and bothersome rules and guidelines about where to place the pets, are the ones which are no-kill, the ones where the dog/cat runs no risk of being gassed. They’re selective everywhere, they selected the animal, they provide a temporary higher standard of living than the local will-kill shelter, and they expect slightly more from the people going there than those at the county-run, animal-control shelter.
There’s a huge difference between a less than perfect owner and a truly abusive one. Sometimes it’s hard to weed out the bad ones, but shelters should at least try.
My neighbours in the apartment I used to live in adopted a pitbull from a shelter. They probably took her because there was no adoption fee because of BSL where I live. Nice enough adult dog. Walking herbecame hit or miss as time went by… she would get a walk in the morning, but then no one would remember to walk her again until late at night. She started peeing in the apartment. So they ‘punished’ her for messing inside and started locking her in the bathroom when they weren’t home. As time went on, her ‘behaviour’ issues increased. Peeing in the apartment, chewing things…
There was an incident where there was a bit of a snappy, snarly encounter with another dog from the building - two bitches, too close to each other and not a big deal. As nice dog as she was, she was still a pitbull and dog on dog aggression should be a consideration. The dog’s owner literally put the boots to her in a fit of temper. So when my friend offered to take her, they handed her over willingly. They didn’t want her, they weren’t taking good care of her and she was more work than they thought.
Is that a home you would send a dog to? Not horrible people, just a family with not enough time for a dog and a Dad with a short fuse. Personally, I’d sooner euthanize my dogs than send any of them to that home.
I work with animal control and humane societies, I investigate animal cruelty cases as part of my job - so, yes, I know all about terrible, horrible, animal abuse - and I STILL can not get my mind around the “better off dead” mindset of many humane society/rescue workers.
How anyone can think death is better than spending some time on a chain, in a crate while the owners are at work, etc. is beyond me. It’s also beyond me how any rational person can be told that someone plans to occasionally put their dog on a chain and hear that they will probably have the animal rot outdoors for years as a too-small collar eats through his neck.
There is one way of looking at animal welfare that classifies an animal’s experience as 1) An ideal life, 2) A life worth living, or 3) a life not worth living. It seems that many of the rescue organizations that are the most rigid don’t see step 2 for some reason, only 1 or 3. In real life, most animals have a “2” life, just like most humans.
Earlier this year I worked with an “foster only” rescue organization who was trying to place a sweet little dog - who was an unsocialized, people shy, pit bull cross. Not an easy dog to place. A family fell in love with her, and they looked like ideal situation. But they had an intact male dog and no fenced in back yard. I was very, very happy when common sense prevailed and the family got the dog.
