Opinions/advice re shelter dog adoption

In My Humble Opinion
1

The adoption has already taken place, FYI. I’m trying to figure out if I am being unreasonable or not regarding the following:

The dog was listed on a popular pet search website as being a two year old purebred Newfoundland. The ad also stated that she was up to date on shots, had been spayed, microchipped, groomed, and had Frontline. My husband went to look at her, fell in love, signed the contract and paid the fee of $375. We picked her up a few days later.

When we picked her up on the weekend, she had a runny nose and a cough. We were told it was kennel cough that the shelter mgr had been giving her an antibiotic to treat. We weren’t given any of the medication to take along; in fact, the only thing we got was a copy of the contract and a copy of vet exams and vaccines that a different shelter had given her about ten days previously. And at that time, the shelter mgr also informed us that they had been told by the previous shelter that the dog was four, not two, but that they disagreed due to the condition of her teeth.

I took her to the vet on Monday and she had an upper respiratory infection and both ears looked bad, one was said by our vet to be infected. She needed a heartworm preventative and a Lyme disease shot and by the time we were done, I had spent an extra $200.

But before I made the vet appt, I was trying to find out if she was spayed (I couldn’t find the ad right then) and it wasn’t on her previous paperwork from the first shelter, so I called them to get the information. I noticed, looking at their paperwork, that the dog was listed as a mix, not a purebred. The man from the shelter told me that the previous owner had said she was six, not four, not two. (The previous owner had also listed the dog as a Saint Bernard, so I am allowing for some complete confusion from that person).

Looking back at that ad, discrepancies however small keep popping up. Shelter 1 says she’s a mix, shelter 2 says she’s a purebred. I asked how shelter 2 would know this since they had no papers and was told that the owner had been doing rescue so long that she was an expert, and that she had decided the dog was purebred.

Age - it’s easy for a dog’s age to not be exactly determined, but to definitely state two in the ad, then change to four when we get her, then to have shelter #1 say they were told six… My vet said approximately four, BTW.

Then there is the issue that the dog was being treated with an antibiotic, so they knew she was sick, but they did not have her properly checked out and I ended up with a $200 bill because of that. Had it been a week or two later, I would have felt that we just had bad luck, but having that bill hit two days later makes me feel that she should have been checked out when she got sick.

The contract from shelter #2 states that adoption fees are nonrefundable because they provide vet care, but in this case they provided none. Shelter #1’s medical records have her with them on 7/29, and we picked her up on 8/10. I just feel that we were not provided with the healthy purebred two year old dog that was advertised. I realize that maybe I’m being unreasonable and that this is practically a novel, but I really need some outside opinions to help me decide whether or not I want to pursue at least a partial refund. (The dog is very sweet and well behaved, and my family loves her already, so she’s not going back to the shelter. Besides, we still have meds she needs to take!)

If you’re still reading, thanks! I want to be reasonable with my expectations and requests about this in my communications with shelter #2.

2

In think you would be perfectly justified to ask Shelter 2 for a partial refund due the the absence of vet care. The rest, well…if there were no papers, then you had no assurance the dog was a purebred. As far as age goes, that estimate could have been an accident, or a strategy. So glad you love the dog. In the end, that’s really what is most important.

3

Thanks for the reply. I do agree and in fact I wasn’t specifically searching for a purebred dog. I was more interested in the dog’s temperament. I think what bothers me about the difference between the ad and reality is that I was lied to, and that makes me insecure about anything else I’ve been told about the dog.

This isn’t our first shelter dog; we adopted a Newf mix from a shelter in 2003, and had none of these sorts of issues with the other shelter.

4

Some people who run shelters have only a very loose connection with reality.

Kennel cough is pretty common in a shelter situation, but a dog with kennel cough is NOT a healthy dog and should not be advertised as such. A dog with an infected ear is also not healthy.

I don’t think that the shelter that you adopted this dog from has acted ethically or honestly. Maybe you would have passed the dog up if she’d been advertised honestly, or maybe you would still have fallen in love with her. But I do think that you should have been given accurate information, including the fact that she’s not a purebred. I think that the safest thing to do is to just assume that none of the information is accurate. It REALLY sucks that you don’t know if she’s spayed or not, though, because that’s major surgery, and expensive, too.

5

They may have overlooked the ear if they saw the kennel cough (which is, after all, the worst of two). Shelter #2 should’ve given you the meds she was given, and more information about her health. It is possible she started showing signs of kennel cough after her ad was listed, and nobody deigned to change the status from healthy to “temporary kennel cough”. It is also possible they list animals as healthy as long as they don’t have chronic or congenital diseases. For example, a dog with an UTI would be healthy, but a dog with a known heart murmur is not, or a cat with an aural (ear) abscess is healthy, but a diabetic cat is not. Still bad if they don’t give you the information and medicine you need to treat the temporary disease and make the animal really healthy again.

Ask the current vet if they can shave your dog’s belly and find a spay scar, or if there is some tattoo or other mark that would indicate a spay was done. Also, if there are prominent mammary glands, you know at least that at some point she had a litter, but that won’t tell you if she is currently spayed. Does shelter #1 know if she is spayed or not?

I’m glad, though, that besides all that, she has become acclimated and your family cherishes her. You know eventually people will ask for a pic. :wink:

6

They never had her checked at shelter #2, so they wouldn’t have seen the ear. The shelter manager just started giving her “doxy” for kennel cough and I think she had taken it 3 or 4 days when we picked her up.

I appreciate the input and I bet I can find a picture somewhere!

7

It sounds as if the shelter is poorly run. People at shelters often think that lying about the animals is okay because the important thing is that the animals get homes and care. Recently I saw photos of what were quite obviously pit bull puppies described as “shepherd mixes.” When I commented that they were pits after someone else asked, this was apparently a no-no. While I agree that a shelter should put the animals first, tricking someone into adopting a dog under false pretenses is unethical and is bound to backfire much of the time. In the case of the pit bulls, the new owners may find themselves with a dog that their community or insurance does not allow and surrender a now-less-adoptable adult dog. In the case of your dog, you may not have had the extra money for the unexpected expenses and surrendered the dog.
I don’t think demanding money back will get you anywhere though. If it was important to you to have a purebred dog, you should know that without papers, that can never be certain. I don’t think even those DNA tests are entirely accurate, and waiting for the rests while the dog sits in the shelter would definitely make any shelter doubt that you’d provide a loving home for the animal.
You can’t consider extra vaccinations that you chose to get against the shelter though, or heartworm prevention. It’s your dog now, those things are now your responsibility.
When you get a dog from a shelter, you aren’t purchasing a product, you’re bringing home a new family member. I’m sure the shelter is non-profit and that your fees are used for expenses, so demanding money back would not be appropriate. Write a letter expressing your concerns and enjoy your dog.

8

I think they acted dishonestly and you deserve at least a partial refund. I also think there’s no way you’ll get it. In my experience, most rescues are run by normal, honest people who love animals and want to find them homes. But a significant minority are run by dishonest lunatics, and it can be hard to know which you’re dealing with at first.

I wouldn’t fault you for asking for some or all of your money back; I would. But beyond that, i would go online and leave reviews on all the pertinent websites about this, including contacting Petfinder (it was Petfinder you used, right?) and telling them that this rescue is dishonest. If they lied to you, they are lying to others, and next time the lies could be more damaging. For example, what if a dog presented with something more contagious and deadly (like Parvo) and they adopted it out as healthy, and someone’s other dogs died?

Asking $375 for a dog they gave little to no care is outrageous and disgusting. Call 'em out.

9

Is there some kind of reporting agency you can contact? Maybe even the pet-search website if it has several shelters listed?

10

I don’t know of any sort of agency to contact. I am going to try to pursue a partial refund but like miss elizabeth said, I really don’t expect to get anything.

I was told by the manager that the shelter owner is an attorney, so I will have to be really careful about how I word any reviews of the shelter. I did make sure that shelter #1 knows, so they have already had someone up at shelter #2 inspecting the operation. I was told by #2 that it wasn’t necessary for me to call #1 anymore.