Pet Stores, Puppy Mills, Animal Shelters and all those *Poo* doggies.

These stories are so frustrating to hear! Too often I hear from adopters who have come to our shelter after visiting several and being told they could not adopt the animal they chose. How can we expect people to think 'adopt first' if we don't make it a positive experience?

I've worked at a busy shelter for the past 5 years. Our main goal is to get everyone of the animals a loving home. And of course to give them the best care we can while they are with us.

Our application is short- we want the person's basic info, their owning/renting status (so we can verify that the pet is allowed), and the pets currently owned. The bulk of our adoption process happens as a conversation between the adoption counselor and the client (and always starts with the person picking out an animal and getting to touch it!). That's when you get to find out if the client's expectations and abilities match the animal they've selected.
Some animals have restrictions on children's ages and other pets they can go home with. Those are based on previous history and observed behavior. Staff is always happy to explain exactly why they are in place and to either find another pet more suited or a way to make the chosen pet work in the family.

It's true that we want to make as sure as possible that the animals don't end up back in a shelter. But my take on it is if a person thought enough about adoption to visit the shelter, they are already on the right track to showing they will make a good pet owner.

Sorry this got so long, it is something I feel very strongly about.

If you're looking for an animal in the Southeastern Massachusetts area, let me know! We've got lots and I promise to make your adoption process a positive experience!
 
I wan't suggesting you should, only curious as to why you would feel guilty about doing it.

I ask again, does anyone know exactly what happens to these dogs in pet stores if they are not sold? Do they get sent back to the mills, do they get sent to a shelter or do they get destroyed just because?

Never mind, found some info. Typically they continue to slash the price on the pup until it sells, if it doesn't sell they eventually give it away. I assume to a shelter but haven't got that far in my research. They do not send it back to the mills, only because if they repeatedly did that, the mills would no longer supply the store with pups.


I read that with some Petland stores, if they don't sell within a certain time then they send them to a place to be gasses. Just put them all in a room, turn on the gas and ...well, yes.


For almost nine out of 10 dogs who enter it, the Athens County Dog Shelter becomes a death sentence rather than a chance at a new life. Every three to 10 days, depending on how crowded the shelter becomes, county employees enter the facility, located on Ohio Rt. 13 near Chauncey, andprepare a "keep list." Dogs on the "keep list" get a reprieve until the shelter fills again and another list has to be made.

Last year, 1,068 dogs failed to make the list. They died not because they were guilty of any specific offense, but because they were unwanted and abandoned. The dogs were gassed to death with carbon monoxide. Their bodies were put in a plastic trash bag and taken to the landfill -- all at taxpayer expense. The fate of the 135 dogs who were adopted last year is unknown. What is known is that the taxpayer again helps foot the bill when the county provides a $20 spay or neuter coupon with each adoption.




http://www.geocities.com/Petsburgh/Fair/1901/petland_the_truth.html
 
We tried to adopt a golden with multiple health issues we were willing to correct through treatment (On our dime) and we were denied too. I am really tired of trying to do the right thing and be denied!
We are getting a puppy for Christmas and we will be going with a breeder who doesn't turn their nose up at us.
we were also denied at a shelter:confused3

we are loving pet owners, and we just wanted to rescue a cat...but since we had a 5 yo (who btw is used to being around cat and 2 dogs) we couldn't....

both our dogs come from breeders (no poos lol dachshund and GSD) but we've always gotten our kitties from shelters..... until we moved to a place they would rather kill a cat than give it a loving home.....
 
I now see that you are in the Chicago area, as am I. This wouldn't have just so happened to take place in Hinsdale, would it?


Yep.



My neighbor has two pit bulls, inside the house all the time. Those dogs bark a lot more than my dog and you can hear them INSIDE my house. .

That's odd. Not a 'normal' pit trait. They're not known to be barkers, in fact the opposite.

Poor things are probably so frustrated to be acting out like that. :sad2:
 

But my take on it is if a person thought enough about adoption to visit the shelter, they are already on the right track to showing they will make a good pet owner.

How I wish that was true. But then we deal in cats, not dogs, and I happen to foster kittens (I also work the adoption clinics).
They do think enough to come in..but many love them when they are cute and tiny, and have returned them when they aren't so cute and tiny. We have a return for any reason policy. Remember these are cats, not dogs. Reason for returns:
Got too big, we had a baby, it's time for her shots and we can't afford them, she scratched my visitor, we're moving, she got old and she wet on the floor.

As for age requirements..we didn't used to say that you have to be over 6, if the kitten is under six months, until we had a couple squeezed to death. A little too much loving. Even wonderful children who have grown up around there cat, just can't always resist that extra squeeze, and kittens just can't take it. We saw several of these, when I worked for the vet hospital.
 
Reading all this, I realize how incredibly lucky I am. I have two shelters. Both were adopted when I was living in an apartment. The only thing I had to provide was something from the manager saying that it was okay. I'm sure elsewhere I would have been denied.

I was incredibly lucky too, I guess. In order to get my kitten from the shelter, all I had to do was fill out some paperwork and fork over $80 for her. Supposedly some was an involuntary "donation" to the shelter and the rest was for the spaying. I just had to make sure to send in the paperwork from a vet showing she got her vaccinations.
 
How I wish that was true. But then we deal in cats, not dogs, and I happen to foster kittens (I also work the adoption clinics).
They do think enough to come in..but many love them when they are cute and tiny, and have returned them when they aren't so cute and tiny. We have a return for any reason policy. Remember these are cats, not dogs. Reason for returns:
Got too big, we had a baby, it's time for her shots and we can't afford them, she scratched my visitor, we're moving, she got old and she wet on the floor.

As for age requirements..we didn't used to say that you have to be over 6, if the kitten is under six months, until we had a couple squeezed to death. A little too much loving. Even wonderful children who have grown up around there cat, just can't always resist that extra squeeze, and kittens just can't take it. We saw several of these, when I worked for the vet hospital.

We have dogs, but the vast majority of our adoptions are cats. They are surrendered for the reasons you listed, but also because sometimes life changes force people to surrender. Our job is to do the best we can to get them into permanent homes. I'll never agree that a cat can't go home to a family with children- my job is to spend the time needed so that both the family and myself feel comfortable with the match.
Of course there are returns. But not so many. And what use would we be to the community if we didn't take the time to educate and create suitable homes for animals? It's easy to become cynical working in a shelter environment, but we owe it to the animals to avoid doing so.

Every organization is different. But I think all want to do the best for the animals in their care... otherwise, we wouldn't be doing it!
 
I can understand that. I guess I look more at the dogs that are already there and feel sorry for them, which is exactly what those mills count on. .

I totally feel sorry for those puppies too, and have come close to bringing them home too...but I just can't do it.

I'm sorry so many people have had problems with rescues. I know some of them really are nuts, but it seems like the shelters near my house basically give the dogs away to anyone who walks in because they are so full.

I have 3 dogs and have never had any problems getting any of them...they all just seem to find me!! :rotfl: My oldest dog Griffey (8 year old golden)was left with me by an ex boyfriend 7 years ago when we broke up. Next dog Kacie (3 year old Aussi mix) I saw her picture in a free to good home ad on a message board and just had to have her because she was so cute. And the new little guy Jonas (4 month old corgi/border collie mix) is here because my DD18's BFF didn't have her corgi fixed and I couldn't say no to his cute little face! :goodvibes

I really would love to only have one dog....but I don't think that will ever happen....I'm just a sucker...:rolleyes1

I really really really want a full blooded Australian Shepherd but I don't think it will ever happen because these other guys keep finding me and I am at my self imposed 3 dog limit! :confused3
 
When our 10 year old beagle died in surgery three years ago, we were crushed and felt such a great sense of loss. So we decided three months after that to get another dog, I couldn't bare to get another beagle so we looked for a corgi and saw one at the sheltor that we wanted he was 10 weeks old, cute as a button. We filled out papers, and waited and waited and waited until we were fustrated. After a few weeks I called and they told me we couldn't get the dog because our vet didn't have a record of my previous beagle ( well come to find out our vet destroys all vet records once a dog has passed on )....so we were up a creek.
We went out and bought the first puppy we seen, which happened to be a cockapoo, we had never heard of mixed breeds before and frankly didn't care we wanted something to love, anything!
Two years later, I wouldn't trade our cockapoo for the world,...it woould have been a corgi but the sheltor treated us like crap and and looking back, I now think we bought from a puppy mill but we wanted something so bad we weren't thinking straight just needed something to love so bad, but he's a great dog!
 
Last night Eragon gave me the guilt trip of my life. I was scheduled for a 12.5 hour shift. I hate those. I make sure to give my babies a lot of exercise right before and to rush home as soon as it's over. (And they stay in my kitchen/dining room with plenty of room to run). Well, on the way home a nasty storm hit and I ended up stuck in traffic due to an accident and a tree across two lanes of the highway. After I got hom I let them out to run and when they got back poor Erie was just trembling. I don't know if it's from all the hail he ate while outside or if it's because he was scared, but boy did I feel awful.

Awww, poor baby. My great big ol' Certified Crazy Georgia Poo-dog does that, even before the storm comes. We can always tell when bad weather is in the offing. Minky cries and shakes and sticks to me like velcro. We suspect that there may be Poodle Hunters out there, but we can never catch them.:rolleyes: All I can do is just try to comfort him and move slowly so as to not dislodge his 80-lb carcass from my leg too fast. He could have a heart attack or sumthin'.
 
I'll never agree that a cat can't go home to a family with children- my job is to spend the time needed so that both the family and myself feel comfortable with the match. !
I didn't say we have an age limit on a cat..just a young kitten (under 6 months) and for very good reasons. We're all they have to protect them, so that age limit won't be changing anytime soon.
Our regular animal shelter isn't as fussy..but it's harder for those of us who have had them in our homes for 6 weeks, I think.
 
I'll never agree that a cat can't go home to a family with children
:thumbsup2

3488016325_d7dcabc22f.jpg


bffs 4ver (kitten 5 months old at the time)
 
I really would love to only have one dog....but I don't think that will ever happen....I'm just a sucker...:rolleyes1

I'll never go back to just having one dog again! They are so great for keeping each other company and entertaining each other. Every once in a while they get into a spat, but it's pretty rare. It lasts about 30 seconds, then they're making up right away.

We haven't tried three at a time yet. DH says if I bring home another one he's divorcing me. :rolleyes1 I weigh the pros and cons of that. :lmao:
 
They told her that a hawk or eagle could carry it off! I guess that is because of the massive problem of eagles flying around with small dogs in their claws...


:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:



Now that I got that out of my system,
isn't the reason of "poo" mixes something to do with adding the hypoallergenic gene from the poodle to the other dog?
If I like labradors, but I'm allergic to them, I can "design" a hypoallergenic labrador by mixing it with poodle (and also get a fluffier lab).
Technically it's a mutt, but it's a mutt with a purpose.
 
Unfortunately you're not guaranteed that that specific gene will pass on. A lot of people do it because it is simply fashionable or maybe they like the two. I have one dog that probably could have been sold as a designer if his litter had not been given to our local animal shelter. He is a dachshund/Jack Russell mix. I wasn't planning on it, but I was visiting Petfinder out of boredom (not a good thing) and well, I just couldn't resist that little face. Matthias is a little hooligan at times, but he has really brought Eragon (my formerly abused dog) out of his shell. It was funny, I made plans to get Mattie bathed before I brought it home just like I did Erie to get rid of the shelter smell. When I got there the girl who works there told me that apparently a man was in earlier saying he went to adopt the dog but they told him the dog had already been spoken for. I felt bad, but then found out that he did get a different dog instead.

Mattie is so adorable. He has the long body of the dachshund (and the burrowing instincts as my messy bed can attest to) but the coloring of a Jack. He can be stubborn like a doxie but has the energy of a Jack. Needless to say he's a bit of a handful at times, but what can you expect from a dog who's shelter name was "Trouble?" :rotfl:
 
I'll never go back to just having one dog again! They are so great for keeping each other company and entertaining each other. Every once in a while they get into a spat, but it's pretty rare. It lasts about 30 seconds, then they're making up right away.

We haven't tried three at a time yet. DH says if I bring home another one he's divorcing me. :rolleyes1 I weigh the pros and cons of that. :lmao:

Three is way harder than two!! Two dogs are easy....three is a pain. I had three dogs before but my oldest died 2 years ago, so we just had the 2 for 2 years. When I wanted the puppy DH said, "don't you remember what a pain 3 dogs are!?" But he never tells me no so the puppy came home.

Three cats are easy......three dogs..not so much.
 
I don't think the boxer and poodle understand why either :laughing:

I am shocked that the shelter denied your friend. There is so much emphasis on adoption, which I totally suport, but it seems that the shelter in this case is going to make it nearly impossible to adopt from them.
Although my first choice would be from a shelter, my heart breaks for the those animals that are stuffed in those cages at the pet stores. No matter what your friend gave an animal a home :lovestruc

I'm not. Shelters have gone WAY overboard with their adoption processes-and is perhaps WHY they are so overcrowded these days. My FIL is the biggest dog nut you have ever seen. He has ALWAYS had a dog. When their last dog passed away from old age-best dog EVER--they went to the local shelter to adopt a new dog. They were DENIED. Now, this dog would have had the perfect life, total attention, lots and lots of exercise, it's own seat in the car, you name it. They got turned down because of their age. Give me a break. They are the PERFECT candidates to adopt a dog. They ended up driving 2 hours away on an ad they found online for someone that needed to give up their dog because of a move.
 
They got turned down because of their age. Give me a break. They are the PERFECT candidates to adopt a dog. They ended up driving 2 hours away on an ad they found online for someone that needed to give up their dog because of a move.
We have a program that our cats over 6 are free to people over 60. We are cautious if someone wants a kitten are are in their 70's, since a cat committment is for about 18 years (and kittens are very underfoot, something that I take into consideration if someone comes in using a cane or walker). I hate to ask, but I do ask, if they have someone (an adult child for instance) that will take the cat if they move into an adult home that won't allow cats...and they figure out I am asking if they pass away. If the answer is no, I do my best to steer them to an older cat. Again, it's with good reason. If they are in their late 70's and the cat comes back in 7 or 8 years, it's a lot harder to adopt it out. Yes, the cat would have had 7 or 8 years of great love, but then what? Sit in a cage in our kennel trying to be adopted while it mourns?
I know to those who don't have to spend day in and day out trying to get all these cats and kittens into forever homes, it seems mean, but with the experience I've had over the past 20 years, it's necessary. We are a no kill shelter (unless the health of the cat is compromised) and excluding our 37 ferals and 18 or so unadoptables (who are not caged), they do all get adopted.
 
But it killed me. I talked her into the Humane Society - and they snubbed her. :headache:

I tried to adopt a cat at the Humane Society a few years ago but they wouldn't let me....because I have a dog. My dog is a super easy going pug who has never chased a cat in her life, nor ever been aggressive to any other living creature. She is not exactly a killer. :rolleyes:

I was so sad. For an organization whose purpose is finding new homes for pets, they sure are picky. :rolleyes1
 
I know that it seems like some shelters go overboard on their rules on who they will adopt too and why, but they do have reasons. For every rule they have there are probably many many people that have caused that particular rule to be in effect.

I saw one rescue organization that wouldn't adopt to military and that made me mad because I am retired Air Force and always took all my animals with me on every move. I had one dog that lived in Texas, Ohio, Alaska, North Carolina and North Dakota, I had her almost my entire AF career. But I also knew people that would get rid of their animals with every move. So the rescue organization had a valid reason.


I also had neighbors that got a cute puppy every 6 months and then tie it up in the back yard and forget about it. Then they would get rid of it and in a few months another cute little puppy would be back there....it made me so sad. We had some neighbors that had a cute little husky puppy that wasn't allowed in the house, so he just sat outside and cried at the door. My then 4 year old asked them why they didn't let him in the house and she was told, "he jumps on the kids" and my 4 year old said, "well, just train him not to jump on the kids, dogs don't belong tied up outside!" :thumbsup2

I don't know if I could ever be the one adopting animals out...I've just seen so many irresponsible pet owners. :sad2:
 




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