I understand why there are so many animal adoption rules...

[NMAmy]

I've had dogs all my life--the dogs that I've had as an adult all came from friends or acquaintances that had puppies that needed a home so I didn't have to go through all this until we got a puppy last summer.

We went to the Humane Society and got a beautiful golden retriever puppy. I was amazed at the hoops we had to jump through--I had to go online and look up the contact information for the vet we used when I lived in New Mexico. The man had only met me a couple of times because my DH used to take the dogs in for their shots, etc. He is a K9 cop and would take our family pets in along with the K9 since his unit was all set up to transport dogs. Luckily, the vet gave me a good reference.

I did feel lucky that dd is 14 and was considered old enough to have a puppy in the home--even though she's lived with dogs since she was born. All of the dogs I saw were not available for adoption to families with kids under the age of 8.

My vet calls my dog "Lucky" because we got her from the Humane Society just a few days before many dogs had to be put to sleep for problems caused by the air conditioning system at the HS. The puppy was only there for 1 and 1/2 days and kept with her litter mates and so escaped getting sick. I'm glad I did all the paperwork in advance and we were able to take her out of there immediately.

 

[Tiffann4k]

Even the shelters can be pains as well. We adopted a dog through a county dog shelter 2 years ago and we had to jump through a million hoops in order to be able to adopt this dog...the irony of the whole thing was she( the dog) was scheduled to be euthenized the next day

 

[Marseeya]

Even the shelters can be pains as well. We adopted a dog through a county dog shelter 2 years ago and we had to jump through a million hoops in order to be able to adopt this dog...the irony of the whole thing was she( the dog) was scheduled to be euthenized the next day

The shelter where I got my dog practically threw her at me and we never did have to pay for her! They told me to take her home for two weeks to see if we liked her, and said to come back and give them the money then ($60). I called them before the two weeks was up to say that we wanted to keep her and they told me to bring her back in because all her littermates got parvo and had to be put to sleep! Just that day, she started throwing up and got diarrhea. I told them to forget it, we'd just take her to the vet and they kept saying, no, to bring her back. She ended up getting better and they told me to forget about the fee.