Two more. We got my aunt’s dogs when she couldn’t handle them anymore. I was about five when we got the second one, and the first one, we “always” had, as far as I knew.
We had to give up Carla (German shephard) when I was a kid because she was too destructive and peed whenever you scolded her. She also would poop anywhere in the house, no matter how much you trained her not to. She was maybe 2 or 3 years old at the time? She had spent nearly all her life in a kennel and we were her first owners.
China (shepard/collie mix) – I was in grade school, and this dog, I swear, could escape from anything, whether it was being tied out or in a fenced yard. She’d escape from your grasp with the leash if you turned her back. We had had her spayed, but all the male dogs in the neighborhood would come calling at certain times (we later surmised she might have had an extra ovary, perhaps?) The worst, though, was her running away. We had our phone number on her name tag, and at least twice a week we’d get calls from two or three towns away saying that “We found your dog, could you please pick her up?” The last straw was getting a phone call from a town maybe 10 miles from us. We called animal control in that town and asked them to pick her up and that we’re surrendering her. I cried for days afterward 
My “other” – I do know of a couple of cases where an obviously elderly dog was surrendered because the owner couldn’t afford to pay for the euthanasia. One of these dogs was picked up by a rescue group without knowing that the dog already had a terminal condition (cancer, perhaps?) The dog was adopted and the new owners had to put it down not even a month later.
Not my dog…
Dug out under a fence and killed a pet chicken of the neighbors…but otherwise just a normal mid sized dog dog…back to the shelter it went.
They went through several dogs and a cat.
I call them friends, reluctantly, considering their animal husbandry issues…a little selfish towards animal rights. (perfect puppy/kitty issues)
I have animals I don’t really want but I deal with them, because they will be killed if I don’t.
All I can do.
- Oh and the best thing we can do is spay and neuter all that we can get our hands on. -
I got my boy Dane at 11 months because the original family was a mom’n’pop mortgage broker in 2007. Danes used to running around 1-acre luxury homesites don’t fit in single-wides.
I said other. One dog given away. We were moving halfway across the world, from a rural area where we had acres of garden to a crammed city where we had no accommodation lined up and my parents didn’t have jobs lined up. We gave the dog and the cats to family friends.
Actually, Danes are notoriously lazy and are perfectly happy hanging out around the house. People often make the mistake of thinking size = activity = space. Great Danes make fantastic apartment dogs, no lie.
Of course, you have to be able to afford to feed them and you need to be ready to have a relatively short relationship, since they tend to have unusually short lifespans as a result of their gigantism, and those are the reasons I won’t have one. Otherwise I’d be all over it…LOVE Danes.
I’ve rehomed four dogs in my life. The first was a 2 year old corgi who my older corgi declared war on when my daughter was born and I didn’t have much time for either dog for awhile. The poor thing was creeping around the walls like a rat. I gave her to my sister where she remained a loved single dog to the end. I gave another corgi, much later, back to the breeder because I got him as an adult and he killed and ate all my pullets – and then I raised another set of chicks to pullet size and he ate them too. Chewed through a wire fence to do it. He also dug under my perimeter fence and ran away all the time – no way to stop him. He was also happily matched with a chickenless family with a concrete back yard. Then there was recently a Kelpie pup I could not housebreak. I have easily housebroken many puppies and there was something wrong with her – not a physical thing, in her mind. She went back to the breeder and became a successful sheep dog who lived in a kennel.
I would never turn a dog in to a shelter. In all the above cases there was a good alternative.
Other - our landlord never got around to fencing the yard in as promised to allow the dog to run around with minimal supervision, and my husband recovering from surgery and me in school full time did not leave us with enough walking/romping time and energy for a dalmatian pup. Which led to the “unmanageable/untrainable” thing, but I don’t blame the dog for a second. It was us, not her. Luckily, we found a couple moving from the naval station nearby out to her mom’s horse farm in another state. I thought it would never work because they already owned a sweet little Mini Pin I was sure she’d break in two with a clumsy paw, but the two dogs hit it off immediately, and our big clown actually calmed down and acted gentle around him.
I know my kids will never believe me, but Siren really was sent away to live on a farm and run with the horses. 
One unmanageable, two others. The unmanageable one went to a shelter after weeks of trying to find him a home. He could not be trusted out of his crate for more than a minute…he chewed pillows, clothes, peed and pooped everywhere, tore up carpeting, just generally ran around like a crazy thing and drove the other two dogs wild. His owners were moving across the country and could not find a rental that would allow them to have three dogs, so they found a good home for one and took the Rottweiler with them, but time was running out and Roxo needed a wider audience to find a proper home, so the shelter was the answer.
The first other was a dog that had been given to us by our neighbors when they moved. They had never really wanted her, kept her tied up outside all the time, and I spent more time petting her than they did. But she did not get along with our cats, kept escaping from the fenced yard, I knew nothing about training dogs and being pregnant, didn’t have time to learn. My ex wanted to train her for hunting, and when we went on vacation he boarded her at a training kennel where she was brilliant as a bird dog. But he finally had to admit he wasn’t going to do any hunting and didn’t have the time or skills to train her properly, so we found her a new home with a friend of a friend who had some property he hunted on, and we heard she was doing well…until the day she either jumped the fence and ran off, or was stolen from his yard.
The second other was a wonderful, sweet, cuddly full-grown dog named Homer that one of my daughter’s friends asked us to watch for a week while he got his act together…he’d just gotten kicked out of his place and had no job, no money. He disappeared for a few weeks then called and said he wouldn’t be coming back, his family wouldn’t take the dog and could we please keep him? We were living in a rental and had already exceeded our allowed pets…we were in fear the landlady would stop by and see this “visiting” dog that we could not even afford to feed. A friend of mine with three sons, one in a wheelchair, heard about our plight and said she’d take Homer if he wasn’t bothered by the wheelchair. We took him over for a visit and the boys just fell in love, the wheelchair didn’t bother him, and he is still with them, 13 years later. One funny thing happened, though…we had loved on that dog like he was family, but three years later, I stopped at this friend’s house prior to a girls night out, and Homer took one look at me, ran cowering into a corner and pee’d on himself, shivering in fear. I was mortified! We had never mistreated him! But apparently he thought I was there to take him away, or just associated me with the loss of his first owner. Fortunately I never had a reason to stop by her house again, and wouldn’t have anyhow, seeing how scared he got!
We went through a few dogs when I was growing up. One stayed long-term, but the others ended up just being bad fits. Lots of kids around and the dog was too jumpy, or, in one memorable case, the cute wolf/StBernard/GreatDane ‘puppy’ turned into a very large and incorrigible EaterOfFurniture. I should ask my dad whether that one DID end up at a farm in the country, because around here that is quite plausible.
When I was a kid we had a dog who wasn’t spayed and had a litter. One day I came home and they were all gone. Then she was spayed.
A married couple, friends of ours, were notorious for returning dogs with issues due to “allergies”. But then they’d go get another one. The two they returned had short hair, the one they ended up keeping was a golden retriever. Then one of them mentioned that one of the other dogs had destroyed a couch due to separation anxiety and poof, back to the rescue.
I took in my aunt’s dog when she had to go to the hospital. She never made it out of the hospital so it’s become permanent.
My other dog is destructive to carpets and doors (up to and including the door frames) due to separation anxiety. He also learned to jump over a 6’ fence and run away a lot. We fixed that but then he learned to dig under (eating the wood, bleeding, lost some of his front teeth, paw damage). The longest he was gone once was 8 days, we found him 5 miles away, having crossed several busy streets to do so. I’d never give him up.
Unmanageable. And by unmanageable, I mean “we can’t be arsed to put any effort into meeting the exercise and training needs of this dog we got without considering whether it would be a good fit.”
A sister-in-law got her former mother-in-law’s little Yorkie when FMIL moved. The dog wasn’t groomed properly, so that improved at least - she went from a little greaseball to an adorable dog. But she’d also complained that her FMIL had the dog peeing in a shower stall rather than housetraining her. I guess she wasn’t any better at it because her solution became just putting a couple sheets of newspaper on the kitchen linoleum, where the dog would go all the time. At least training the dog to run into their second bathroom’s shower (which wasn’t really used) would have been cleaner.
I’ve never given up a dog…but I have got a dog. From a stranger. He and his wife had foster kids, who didn’t like dogs. Seems strange to me, as he’s a very friendly, small dog, but hey - lucky me!
Other, doctors orders, severe allergies.**
Other:
A friend adopted a 3rd dog into her house full of animals. She also had livestock (horses, chickens, a goat) The dog was really unhappy in such a crowd, wanted to chase the smaller animals but was terrified by the other two larger dogs. He was starting to show stress-agression, so she found him a home with another friend who had just lost her only dog. Stress-dog is now a happy guy who has his person all to himself, and gets to go on trail runs with her and be her best buddy and guardian. She’s taken him to obedience, they have their CGC, and she’s thinking about getting his Therapy Dog cert too.
One of the rare happy ending rehoming stories
It’s never safe to assume that unless it’s a no kill shelter. I personally know of situations where littters of puppies were killed at the shelter because they became ill at the shelter (many shelters don’t have the resources to treat animals even with minor illnesses) or just ran out of time.
People tend to really get upset at the shelters when they find out puppies were killed, but unfortunately there just is not enough room or money to care for all the unwanted animals out there.
I was very familiar with this shelter (adopted 3 of my dogs there), so I was comfortable doing this. I was not the parent of the child whose dog had the puppies, and I had limited time (a weekend) to find a solution to the problem. I could either place them with the shelter in my city or let a relative from a different branch of the family drown them. I think I made the wisest choice.
I have taken in and then found homes for, several dogs that were about to land in the pound as the owners could no longer keep them.
It never once occurred to me to delve into why they couldn’t keep them, only that they were headed to the pound. That was all I really cared about, to be honest.
So I’m afraid I cannot participate in this poll. Sorry.
Beagle puppy was brought into a home where everyone was at work or school all day. My father didn’t like the idea of getting him fixed, for some reason, and there was no money for dog training classes. Beagle puppy chewed through a couch, several pairs of shoes, jeans, curtains… wouldn’t come back in after being let out to pee, and had to be chased around the yard for half an hour every night to get him inside. Why didn’t we take him out to pee on a leash? Who the hell knows. My parents were insane.
We found a retired couple who already had one beagle and were happy to take in a new one, and we gave him away.
I’m still pissed at my parents for getting a dog in the first place if they weren’t ready to care for it properly. We kids didn’t want a dog, and never bugged them for one! We wanted a cat!