Ethical to adopt dog under false pretenses then give it away?

Great Debates
61

Maybe you saved his life, maybe you sent him somewhere where he’ll run loose until he gets smacked by a car or attacked by coyotes or contracts a contagious disease like distemper and dies horribly. You have no idea because you don’t know the first thing about these people or the girl who picked them out. It happens. A LOT. And that’s assuming this girl even did send the dog to a nice farm family instead of to a puppy mill or a fighting facility, which also happens A LOT.

I say this as someone who has devoted her life to caring for and protecting animals and helping people give them the best lives possible–there are lives far worse than death, and there are deaths infinitely worse than an iv overdose of sedative.

As for the ethics question, I think what you did was highly unethical. The shelter, the people who spend their lives rehoming animals and evaluating potential new homes and actually knew this particular dog had already evaluated this chick and deemed her unsuitable to adopt him. You flat-out lied to them, signed a contract you had not the first intention of honoring, and got this dog into god only knows what kind of situation because you didn’t check out this girl or this other family before handing over a defenseless animal with an unknown temperament to their care. Evaluating a potential home isn’t just about kibble and shots and having a yard to play in and someone being home. It’s also about knowing a pet’s limitations and how that will factor in to a particular household–how it gets along with dogs, cats, children, strangers, whether it has medical issues and whether those are within an owner’s ability to deal with, how its personality fits with the general lifestyle of the home. You knew nothing about any of those things, so you were potentially setting up a really bad situation for everyone involved. That is so not cool.

62

Our local non-kill shelter, which is the alternative shelter to the city kill shelter, is one of those over-the-top dogmatic facist shelters. They turned down a dog adoption to a friend of mine because he lived alone and worked 40 hours a week - too many hours with no companionship. If this had been a kill shelter, I would have had no problem with lying if if was apparent that no one else would adopt this particular dog, if that was the only thing holding up the adoption. The original poster, though, had no way of knowing if the girl was being truthful, and it was far more likely that she wasn’t. The OP was taken in by a sob story s/he had no way of verifying.

63

Pigs are intelligent and capable of emotion, but we eat them. Their lives leading up up slaughter can be pretty awful too. I love all my pets, and they are certainly well cared for, but dogs are dogs, and are generally treated as property, which I think is how it should be. All these ridiculous restrictions put on people by crazy shelters and rescue groups harm dogs. They force otherwise good potential owners to go elsewhere (puppy mills, etc.) to get pets and do nothing to stop truly bad owners either, since they just go somewhere else too. They force dogs to live their lives in cages or other unstable situations, or be put to sleep because so few people are “good enough” to adopt their dogs. The only thing it achieves is that it lets the rescue people feel like they are “doing something,” even if that feeling is incorrect.

I don’t think it’s wrong, in general, to mislead these people. They are doing harm to the animals they are trying to save, and if a lie saves a dog, then that’s a net good. When you are looking at the situations for a lot of these animals, there is no good answer. There simply are not enough perfect homes for these dogs. There aren’t even enough “imperfect but good enough” homes. The facts are heartbreaking. Spay and neuter your pets, people.

64

But you’re sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting, “La la la I can’t hear you!” when we question whether or not you DID save the dog, or whether you were duped into giving the dog to a fighting facility where it spent a short and miserable life.

65

I meant to add this in my last post and forgot. I think the example in the OP is of someone who did something foolish, and possibly stupid, but not really wrong. If the girl was somehow involved in a dog fighting ring, she would be the unethical one, but if that’s the case this guy got tricked by a liar. That makes her wrong, not him. It is definitely a shady area though, and I would have advised against what he did.

Let me give you an example of a better example of what I mean. A few years ago I found a stray dog (I live in an area where people frequently dump animals). She was a very sweet dog, and I cleaned her up and showed her to a fried of mine who had been thinking about getting a dog. After he took her in, and took her to the vet, we discovered she was going to have puppies. So, after the puppies are born and finally old enough to adopt, I called the woman I adopted my cat from to ask her advice on finding homes for these puppies. Since she only rescues cats, she set us up with a group that rescues dogs, and after talking with them, they said we could come to one of their “Adoption Days” at a Petco about an hour away.

When we got there, we realized these people were nuts, basically. They were supposed to help us screen potential owners, but they immediately tried to take the puppies (which we had loved and cared for for weeks) and acted as though we should just go home, although of course we stayed. They also charged a $250 adoption fee to anyone who wanted a dog, even though they had done nothing to help care for these animals. We decided we didn’t care, though, if they could find good homes. We weren’t looking for money.

While we were there a young woman came up and was interested in one of our puppies. She was very nice, and talked with us for awhile. She had another older dog and had pictures of him in her purse. She had a side business making dog treats from all natural substances, because she only wanted the best for her pets. Basically, she was a great pet owner, and exactly the type of person we were looking for. In talking with us she said she was hesitant to pay $250 for a puppy that wasn’t already neutered, because money was tight for her. So, we decided to ask the rescue group to waive the fee for her. Well, they screened her on their own and decided not only would they not waive the fee, she wasn’t qualified to have a puppy at all:eek:, because she lived in an apartment and had another dogs (even though our puppies loved other dogs). So, we pulled her aside, gave her our number, and met her afterwards and gave her the puppy. We took the rest of our dogs and left, and told them we had found other homes. They tried to accuse us of taking “their” dogs without paying, but we hadn’t signed anything so they didn’t have a leg to stand on. They hassled us about it for awhile though.

For the record, I still get regular emails from that girl with pictures of the dog, and updates on how he is doing. He is happy and healthy and well cared for. I don’t think it was the least bit unethical to mislead them in this case.

66

How did you mislead them?

In any event, the OP’s defense of the unethical action of fraud on the contract is, “I did it to save the dog.” But if the dog wasn’t saved, then that sort of kills the justification, doesn’t it?

67

We misled them because we initially agreed to let them find homes for the dogs, and then we told them we were giving them to family members. Which was a blatant lie, but they said if we gave the dogs to someone we met through the adoption we would owe the adoption fees. We didn’t tell them we gave a dog to someone they had rejected. We totally and completely lied to them at the end. Which I don’t feel the least bit bad about, but there it is.

68

there’s a big difference with your case and the op’s. The OP knew for a fact that there would be a breach in contract. Your case, the puppies were yours, you “gave” permission for a 3rd party to handle adoptions, but those puppies were yours and you most likely had final word on deciding where and when the puppies go. If you were totally disgusted by their behaviour you could have just left with all your puppies without a second thought and the 3rd party had no right to claim those puppies as their own. The OP uses the case for “white lie” which in fact is a contract breach. You can’t gussy up the fact that knowing you’re going to actively breach the contract isn’t unethical, because it is. Doesn’t matter who has the dog now a dog fighting promoter, a perfect dog owner or a dog beater, the fact that someone knowingly “scammed” their way to get a dog is shady, and to add to all that it was given to a complete stranger, like come on, a COMPLETE stranger. There is no way I can comprehend the actions. Perhaps when i sign something I’d like it to be on the up and up.

69

I think there is a fairly good chance this saved the dog’s life, regardless of what kind of home it ended up in. It was a large, black, adult dog, which are said to be overwhelmingly euthanized in kill shelters (I can’t find any statistics, though).

Maybe I’m some sort of animal myself, but legal contracts have nothing to do with my personal code of ethics. The only reason I would honor a contract about most things was to avoid making trouble for myself. Morally the only things I feel at all ruled by is what causes the least pain or preserves lives. I have no compunctions about lying etc, if I feel it is likely to save a life or cause less pain.

70

People keep saying this dog’s life was saved but do we know that? How do we know that another better suited family wouldn’t have adopted the dog if this girl hadn’t?

71

We don’t, but his chances at living weren’t good. According to the OP he had 7 days left.

Per the humane society website about 6 million dogs and cats enter shelters each year, and 3-4 million of those are euthanized. Other sources I have seen claim that about 56% of dogs that enter shelters, and 71% of cats, are killed.

Also according to the animal rescue community a large, black, adult dog has a particularly low chance of making it out of a kill shelter.

72

Mmm, there are worse fates than a quick and painless death. A large, black, adult male Doberman has a higher than average chance of being flipped to a fighting pen.

seems to me, looking at worst-case scenarios, at best you are balancing a certain, humane death against an uncertain but very inhumane death.

73

Only one way to find out. The OP should hop in her car and pay an impromptu visit to the dog at its new heavenly home.

74

that dog isn’t black and tan, it’s chocolate. Although i did read about the BBD syndrome or Big Black Dog and there’s a specific rescue for BBDs. BBDs are euthanized at a higher rate than other dogs. They seem scarier than the normal dogs i guess.

75

I disagree, the example in the OP was really wrong. They absolutely lied to circumvent the reasonable protections the shelter put in place to ensure that their animals went to a suitable home and when things predictably fell apart they justified their failed gesture with “I meant well!” If you fuck up you should at least face it, don’t wrap yourself up in a warm blanket and declare, wide eyed and innocent, “Nobody could have predicted this! It’s not my fault!”

76

It’s the “I saved the dog! Look at the cute pictures!” assertion that pisses me off the most. Why not go and check to see how the dog’s doing before just recklessly deciding that all’s well and you did a good thing?

77

I asked the rural family (got their info from ‘sketchy girl’) if it would be ok for the pound to contact them to verify that the dog is indeed happy and healthy. They quickly responded that they had no problem with that and I am confident that if the pound is 1/10th as thorough with their follow-up on the rural family as they were with me, that the dog’s safety will be looked-after.

78

Lucky you, that after flopping around in the air for a while your lie managed to fall back into safe waters. I hope all the subjects of your future deceptions may be as fortunate.

79

What? People do not use Dobermans for dog fighting. It’s all Pitbulls in the US(which are only about 30-60 lbs to a Doberman’s 70-100), and in rare cases other bull breeds.

It is an organized sport with rules and standards, though illegal.

80

I attended a conference on animal welfare earlier this week and one of the presentations really clarified the entire "better off dead"mindset so many shelter workers have. Prior to this I really couldn’t wrap my head around why somebody who claims to love animals would kill a very nice dog rather than let somebody adopt it just because the adopter worked all day or might occasionally chain it outside.

There are 3 possible conditions an animal might experience:

A life not worth living
A life worth living
A good life

Many humane societies don’t seem to consider the second scenario - only the two extremes. Either they attempt to ensure the animals they adopt have a good life, or they decide that animal ought to have no life at all. IMHO in some shelter worker’s minds a euthanized animal is one that can no longer be hurt and is beyond suffering - it’s achieved a perfect state. They are more comfortable with a dead dog than one whose life circumstances they can’t control or are ignorant of. This makes them more likely to euthanize animals than adopt them out. It is also responsible for elaborate ways they devise to control the animal’s post-adoptive lives. Hence the contracts and follow-up visits.

The frustrated adopters who have a problem with the regulations, on the other hand, see the distinction between a life not worth living and a life worth living and get frustrated that shelters can’t appreciate the same difference. It can be pretty insulting to be told that someone would rather kill an animal than have them live with you.

In the real world, animals and people probably shift between these states all the time. Suffering from a fractured femur, say, would result in a life not worth living. However, we’re happy to keep a dog with a fractured femur alive because we know that it can be fixed and in time the animal will have a good life. The dog who is placed in a crate from 9:00 to 5:00 might be one whose life at that point is one worth living. When his master comes home, however, he than has a good life from 5:00 to 9:00.

On a final note - there is research on going on ways to discriminate potential owners from bad. In time pre-adoption screening may be based on more than gut instinct and bias for certain husbandry systems.