I used to browse theBattersea Dogs’ Home site so often I should have set it as my homepage. Unfortunately, because I don’t have a garden, none of the rescure centres would accept me, even for an older, ill, blind or whatever dog that was about to be put down. (I work from home with a communal courtyard and loads of parks within a couple of minutes’ walk and have a teenage daughter who does actually help out with the dog quite a lot).
If and when we ever get a garden, I’ll most likely get a second dog. I’d have to take along my current dog and see which she gets on best with, and choose a dog that was fine with cats.
We look after a friend’s dog a lot, and both she and my dog benefit SO much from having each other around. When we first started looking after her, before we got our dog, Xena always seemed a bit tired of life, but Molly turns her into a puppy again. Her arthritis seems to have vanished - she bounds around the park now. Even though Xena’s a lab mix and Molly’s a Jack Russell and there’s12 years between them, they playfight really well and have never had an actual fight at all. Xena apparently perks up and gets happier whenever she realises she’s on her way here.
They all cuddle up sometimes - both dogs and the cat - and sometimes they all cuddle up with my daughter too. It’d be great to give something like that homelife to a rescue dog.
Although I’d also consider fostering - we’d be a very good testing ground.
Yeah, some of the Pit mixes on there don’t look very Pit. Maybe they just don’t want their time wasted by people who would get interested in the dog and then turn it down when they found out its lineage.
How come Finland doesn’t have many rescue dogs? We have tons in the UK.
That’s a really, really good question that I can’t seem to find an answer for. There’s about 600 000 dogs in Finland, of which 450 000 are purebreds (statistics from 2010 by the Finnish Kennel Club). Maybe the “dog climate” here is different: people tend to get most of their dogs from breeders, meaning they pay quite a lot for them, meaning they have a higher threshold for getting rid of them? (Just wild-ass guessing here, I really have no idea.)
I thought maybe Helsinki is an abnormality and there are more dogs without homes in other parts of the country, but looking at some other areas of Finland, Kainuu in the north-east has one dog looking for a home because the owner died, Mid-Finland doesn’t have any, and Oulu up north has two cats and six rabbits. On the other hand there are quitea fewcats. I think that’s pretty common elsewhere, too, though.
Looking at this list or rescue organizations, it’s Spain, Spain, Spain, Spain, Russia, Spain… The only Finnish link seems to be to a discussion forum where people with dogs needing new homes and people who need dogs in their homes can find each other.
auRa, those are lovely looking dogs and cats. I want Miina (mostly black cat). It’s probably a good thing that I already have a house full of critters.
(I work from home with a communal courtyard and loads of parks within a couple of minutes’ walk and have a teenage daughter who does actually help out with the dog quite a lot).
And I adore herding breeds.