You should ask Ellen Degeneres…I hear she gives away dogs.
On a more serious note, one of my students just gave a good speech about this subject (and she said Las Vegas has some good shelters here).
One bit of info I was not aware of - she said that dogs from homes where they were mistreated were actually one of the best dogs to adopt! According to my student (who has worked at some of the shelters) those dogs desperately want to “please” the human and tend to be the most loyal and friendly when they finally get to live in a home where they are not mistreated.
Then I remembered: I know when I lived in a large house in LA with several roommates, one guy adopted a German Shepard from a man who tied the poor thing on a small balcony for days on end, rain or shine, and neglected it. When this guy finally got the dog, it was so starved for attention and love, it was the best friend you could ever have imagined.
I’ve certainly heard that rescued pets are the most loyal and friendly, because they can remember being somewhere much worse. The Neville kitties are rescued, and they are the sweetest, friendliest cats (except to vets in Luna’s case) ever. I have no idea how one would go about getting anything other than anecdotal evidence for this, though.
How big a deal is having a fence? I don’t have one but I have a decent-sized yard, which makes putting the fence up quite expensive. We are planning on getting a fence at some point though.
That was a sticking point with the first agency. The second just wanted to know that I would get a fence within six months (then never checked). We wanted and got an invisible fence (which works great for our dog) - we have a subdivision that won’t let us fence the front, and a very small back yard we don’t use much - so for the dog to be outside and be part of the family, its the front yard, and that means a well yard trained dog, a chain, or an invisible fence. That wasn’t an acceptable alternative to the first agency, which had an invisible fence prejudice (you shock your dog! And they get out anyway!).
Oh, all the questions that keep popping up in my head…
I would prefer to get a dog from a local rescue (I forgot about the Heaven Can Wait shelter here in LV that has listings on Petfinder.com), but if I end up with an out of town rescue, will they turn me down because they have to travel to do a home inspection?
Also, might I be turned down because I have never had a dog? My husband had dogs when he was growing up (2 Schnauzers who died of OLD age) and His parents have a pair if Bichons and we look after them sometimes when they go out of town and don’t take the dogs.
I guess the shelters might tell me that if I asked, eh?
My husband’s old boss had a border collie, Blue, that he adopted off of ‘doggie death row’ at the pound, he is the best damn dog who was fun, loyal and eager to please. we would dogsit on occasion, and Blue loved to herd you, so we would run around the back yard and he would round us up into one spot. Blue loved it as much as we did.
I think it depends somewhat on what breed you want. Some high-energy breeds need a fenced yard to run around in. Some other breeds are more suitable for apartment-style life where they only go out on walks. It’s not always small breeds that do well in an apartment-style life, either- Great Danes supposedly make great apartment dogs if you’ve got the room for them. Even though Great Danes are big, they do fine as couch potatoes.
I think some will, some will beyond a certain distance, and some won’t.
One thing the (private, no-kill) shelter where I got the Neville kitties wanted to know was if either Mr. Neville or I had had pets before, and if we had had pets and didn’t any more what happened to them. I think I rather impressed them by telling them about the goldfish I had in college that I gave away to a friend when I moved cross-country and couldn’t take them with me.
They did give me the two cats, even though my only experience with cats was my mom having one when I was a teenager and this shelter had a reputation locally for being very picky about who they adopt animals to. My vet was impressed when I told her where I got the cats- she said the scrutiny they give to prospective cat owners was more like the scrutiny people face when adopting a child than it is like what you’d get from a typical shelter. (They didn’t do a home visit, though)
The cats are now happy in a home where we don’t make the bed for their sake (not really- we’re lazy and don’t see the point of making beds). It gives them a comfortable daytime sleeping spot that smells like their humans. I think that’s important to Katya at least. One morning, I put on a sweatshirt, decided not to wear it, and took it off, but left it lying on my side of the bed. When I came home later, she was curled up on it, even though it was a ways away from her usual when-I-come-home-from-work sleeping spot.
First most rescues have volunteers all over the area that they cover and have contacts even further out. If a rescue turns you down because you live to far from them that would be a huge red flag.
Since you are looking for a generally easy breed of dog as your starter dog, no I don’t think that the will hold lack of dog ownership against you. Boxers in general are great starter dogs, not overly bossy or aggressive, Aussies in general are not great starter dogs. Each dog is different of course.
No hearding of people! To many times hearding dogs get turned over to rescue for doing just that. It’s cute when they are puppies and can’t do damage, not so cute when you’ve got a 50lbs dog attached to your ankle.
When I got divorced I had Sam. A 120 pound king Shepherd I had adopted from the pound. When I was married I had room for him and a fenced yard but my ex was an ass. He left the house and left Sam. I took him of course but with the cats and the other two dogs there was no way I could give him a good home.
There was a shepherd rescue in the paper that I called. The lady was the call from **hell[\b].
No matter what I told her she did what she wanted to. She asked for pictures and I sent them and she asked for all contact numbers and I gave them. I told her when I was available and my schedule for the entire month.
She called when I was out of town on business and three way called me in on a person who wanted to adopted with out my knowledge until half way through the call. She harassed me at work on Sams’ condition.
I mean the dog was not in any sort of way mistreated, we just did not have the room for him. This was not a dog I wanted to give up, I just had to, for his quality of life.
I got a call at 8 at night to say ‘she’ was on her way over to see Sam. Instead I got a man and her. He came first and he was a nice man and interested in Sammy. She came later and would not even walk in the door. I guess she thought Sam would rip her throat out.
In the end I let him adopt Sam. I think he was a good man and he was perfect for Sammy. He needed a gentle person but one that was not afraid of his size. I mean he was just a little kid with big bones.
Her on the other hand was a snooty bitch. She lied about everything. I even sent her a self addressed stamped envelope with a payment for what " she claimed she did" and asked her to send me back the pictures of Sam I had given her.
I’m moving from casually looking for a dog to intentionally looking for a dog, and I’m in a building. The dogs who live here seem pretty happy, even though they can’t just run right outside (their owners have to take them out). Am I automatically going to be disqualified because of this?
There is herding and there is herding. I grew up in a sheep-farming comunity, and there were/are a lot of border collie and border collie mixes around (actually, most farms have been breeding their own for generations, and any dog that is not a first-generation scottish import is probably atleast slighty mixed, since the purebreds have an undesirable temparament).
They all herd anything, and there is no damn way to stop them. Leaves, birds, children and cyclists. But they don’t agressively herd, or actually do anything to herd you together. Our mixed-breed Border Collie will try to herd us when the family is out bicycling together, but all he does is run back and forth and look mournfully at the straglers. Never would have occured to us that this is a negative trait; he is more “keeping and eye on his pack” than “herding”.
Anyway, be sure to spend time with any prospective dog, and ask about any strange quirks or inconsistencies with the description the shelter gave you. If they are anything less than uppfront about the dogs, I would not risk it.
Since so many dogs end up in shelters because of indiscriminate running around, most rescues are very concerned about how you intend to keep the dog from running wild in the neighborhood with the attendant traffic danger. A fenced yard is ideal, but an enclosed dog run is nearly as good for a dog who’ll be spending the majority of its time indoors. If you’re getting a small dog suitable for a mostly indoor lifestyle the rescue will be checking to make sure that your landlord actually allows pets, that you have areas nearby to walk the dog regularly and will ask you some pointed questions about what you would do if your landlord decided to go with a no pets policy or you have to move–are you going to dump the dog?
Rescues want to make sure that you’ve thought about what accomodations you need to make to own a dog. They want to see that you’ve made reasonable plans to anticipate the dog’s needs and that you aren’t just getting the dog on a whim. Not being an experienced dog owner doesn’t disqualify you, but they will want to know how you plan on continuing the socializing and obedience training the foster owners began–you should be aware of and ready to enroll in obedience classes in your area if you’ve never owned a dog before. A reasonable rescue person will see what you’ve done and will be upfront if your arrangements aren’t suitable for the dog you’ve chosen. Large breed dogs especially end up in rescues and shelters with depressing regularity merely for the crime of growing up–big dogs require special care and feeding, they can inadvertently cause damage to property and people if they aren’t socialized properly and nobody wants to see the dog go back to rescue because they were placed with someone who didn’t have adequate knowledge of the committment involved in keeping a big dog.
It helps if you don’t think of the placement questionaire as intrusive, but instead consider it as a good checklist to make sure you’ve really thought about what you’re doing when you bring a dog home to live with you. It’s like that pre-wedding meeting with the minister, y’know?