Why are rescues so difficult?

[Wifezilla]

Yup. Hoarders in disguise.

As for adopting from a local shelter, not unless I feel like fighting parvo. Every single person I know that adopted a puppy from the shelter had to spend a lot of time and money trying to save it because it had parvo. All the kittens have fpv.

The only rescue around here that seems to have some sense is the greyhound rescue.

 

[ksalvagno]

I have to admit that I have had good experiences with the local shelters in my area. I know there are plenty of bad ones out there but I have quite a few good ones around. The "private" rescues are the ones that make you jump through tons of hoops to adopt and some have very bad communication. The last barn cats that I got were from a local SPCA that has a barn cat program. I called, they had some cats available, I went and picked them up the same day. I had to fill out some paper work and a couple months later they called to see how they were doing and that was that. While there are a lot of bad shelters out there, there are some good ones too.

 

[farmerlor]

There's a horse rescue here that is run by some people with sense and I like the people who rescue a whole lot of animals down in Black Forest if they're still operating but man, those dog shelters in and around Denver would much rather kill the animals than try to get them good homes. I realize it's a high stress job and I know I could never, ever work at a shelter but good golly, it only makes good sense to at least treat the people who come there looking to adopt nicely. If they adopt a dog or cat or whatever that's one less animal you have to be stressed out over, one less animal who's going to haunt you after you put it down. REALLY! Treat the people like people and they will adopt your animals. Tell them you know that all these hoops we have to jump through are ridiculous and cut us some slack once in awhile. Every single one of my animals is a rescue either from being dumped here or we went to a shelter and got them so I want a little respect if I go back and ask for another animal. Damnit.

 

[Shiloh Acres]

I've had shelter visits that went ok, but I didn't adopt animals through. I once went to a no-kill shelter looking for a puppy and they had some nice ones I would have considered but they pretty much made it plain up front that I would have had to jump through too many hoops and spend way more $ than I could afford as well. They said, "We want to make sure you have the financial resources to take care of the puppy." Well, fine, but meanwhile they are living in cobbled-together cages in the dark with not enough staff to spend time with them soooooo ... I can see how it's better not to let me take it when I can afford to feed it, house it properly, and give it routine medical care because it just MIGHT need a $10,000 operation someday that I can't pay for. So I have to tell my kid we can't afford to "buy" a shelter pup. I'm glad I went on that first (and only) visit alone.

I've adopted cats from private rescues several times. They usually want $25 or $30. My vet ran a rescue that provided spay/neuter and all vet care for a year included in that price (I'm still convinced that man was a saint!). One cat rescue was sadly overcrowded and they reduced their fee to $5 but for my trouble I got kittens with FLV.

I tried to get involved with a dog breed rescue once. I was willing to foster, but since I lived further away I said if they'd rather, I'd volunteer for events, phone help, paperwork, and all the other necessary stuff that needs staffing too. Apparently my email was forwarded around the organization and someone hit "reply all" and I got someone's reply that they'd never heard of my town (ok so it was pop 1,000 but so what?) and that I was some kind of trouble waiting to happen and that they should get rid of me. I actually sent very nicely worded reply, considering I WAS offended at their wording, and politely declined helping them, and never heard back from them. Oh, I was interested in adoption (possibly) as well, but ... Instead I eventually went to a breeder and BOUGHT a puppy.

I dunno ... That's not the only time I've had organizations turn me down for helping. My only contact was email, so I hope it's not "me". LOL. I know I am long-winded but ... Sheesh!!!

 

[savingdogs]

Okay, I AM one of those rescue people so let me weigh in here. Although my experience is more dog and cat, I have rescued rabbit and I think I can lend a little insight here.

I hate shelters despite working with them. I have seen times when good people cannot adopt as well. I hate that, and rudeness. No reason for it. Our society should be taking better care and doing a better job. Sometimes it means the community needs to get involved.
We improved our local shelter by putting complaints together and giving them to the board of directors. Eventually, a bad manager was let go. Things improved. More money was donated and they built a nice large beautiful shelter. Things are much better now. But the community has to care. Many people don't like to think about the shelter. Or they give blindly. When the terrible manager was in charge, so much money was squandered....

In any event....rescues.....are populated by overly emotional people who cannot "let things rest" and must "do something". They are opinionated, hard boiled and get burn out when we are not on our soapboxes. There are some who are hoarders.....us legitimate rescuers resent however being compared to them, it is not the same thing. You can usually spot the "good" ones as we are all about spaying and neutering and don't have too many at one time, and we provide basic good health management to all in our care.

I do screen people who adopt animals from me, but so would anyone who spends the time, money and compassion it takes to do this. I am not going to let people I feel are inappropriate adopt my fosters and since I'm the one volunteering, I feel it is my right, I saved their life and get to choose. People often do not know what they want or need and discard pets that do not work out. When I can see a situation that does not look optimal, I will not adopt to that situation. I wait until the right thing comes along. Sometimes it is a matter of just not being able to trust strangers to do the right thing. But we have managed to find the RIGHT home 378 times now for dogs, and about 53 times now for cats, three rabbits.

Rescues have a hard time with staffing. Only very very large groups have paid help. Everything else is volunteer. Can you imagine a workplace where no one was paid and you did not really want to fire anyone because of short staffing, so you had to make do with what you have? And these folks usually have day jobs too. So people who are in charge can get terribly terribly overinvolved and have way too much on their plate. This does not make for efficient "help". While I'm talking about my own experiences, there are well run and poorly run rescues, they cannot be lumped all together. There are a few places that really lead the pack, mostly in San Francisco and Utah, and the "good"people want to copy those models in both shelters and rescues.

Rescues dealing with one specific breed tend to be very particular about who gets to adopt their dogs because they can and do choose the very best homes for these dogs they can possibly find, often there are wait lists. This is because there is not an oversupply of these dogs.

Rescues dealing with all breeds and mutts usually are more lenient, but again you are dealing with these emotional personalities and people who just love animals just a little too much and have put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into THOSE particular ones.

I've volunteered also in rabbit rescue and found most of those folks to be extremely "overboard". They believe all rabbits must live inside homes. They would be appalled to hear I am currently raising meat rabbits. That would be sinful to them and a reason to ban my name forever from adopting from any bunny rescue. However, I respect that. But you see, they are fulfilling their purpose for helping those pets in the first place. People are not rescuing animals to help people. They are helping the animals so they may be cared for as they see fit. So the rabbit folks may be extra particular, it is their choice.

Now shelters being mean to potential adopters is just plain old bad management. You should complain to the proper authorities. They do listen, believe me, especially if you get other people together to complain.

Sometimes you need to DEMAND better things of your community. In mine, I made this a "mission" in my life and the fact that I helped play a small part in removing that man from his job is one of the biggest accomplishments of my rescue "life". He was a perfect example of the things you describe here at the bad shelters.

Unfortunately, I can no longer do so many of the things I used to for the animals of my community because of my health. I could really not be doing anything at ALL if it were not for the fact that my whole family is involved in this project. Rescuing dogs and working in shelters is very hard...very taxing and shows you the dregs of society and the sickos.....if those people in the shelters were not hard bitten and tough, they might not be able to work there. While rescues can pick in choose whom they deal with, shelters cannot. Food for thought.

Well my two cents turned into several dollars worth, but this is a world I understand.

I love you all, hope I did not ruffle any feathers with my comments.

 

[lwheelr]

We thought we'd get a kitten for our daughter from the shelter in Laramie. They have a ton of kittens listed on their website.

Then we find their hours - they are ONLY open during limited in-school hours. We can't even take our daughter to pick out a kitten without withdrawing her from school for the afternoon.

Then we get the paperwork - FIVE PAGES to their very invasive application form (I put less info than this on our children's birth certificate forms), and $35.

We said forget it. We can go on craigslist and get one for free, why bother?

 

[Beekissed]

Two of my dogs were at some point in time in animal shelters. Two of the smartest, sweetest and most loyal dogs I've ever known and they were a valuable part of my family. Both were with me for several years until they were put down due to medical reasons.

Having said that, I got them from people who wouldn't take care of them and no longer wanted the pet they had gotten from the shelter. One of these people didn't want to feed or water the dog and gave him to me for the price of a carton of cigs.

The other person who didn't want her pound puppy kept her inside for one day, decided she didn't like fur on her carpeting, kept her tied to a five foot chain for a year and finally moved away from the place and left her there to die. The neighbors were coming over to feed and water her.

THESE people were carefully screened to have dogs from a shelter??? I only dealt with one shelter one time....and was turned down even before applying because I didn't have a 6 ft. fence around my entire yard and couldn't promise to keep a LGD inside my home.

It seems to me that these folks are misguided, unrealistic and deliberately keeping animals at the shelter for one reason or another....and then willy-nilly giving them to people who have no business having them at all. It has never made any sense to me and never will.

 

[Bettacreek]

I've volunteered at the shelter here before. From that volunteer work, I adopted a dog there as well. Again, NOT good experiences. First, I was almost bitten by a dog that was in the main display room. It was an aggressive dog and when I went to take it out of the cage to walk and clean the cage, they said, "oh wait, close that door, that dog is MEAN!" Then they explained to me how it was terribly aggressive. Umm... So why is this dog not PTS and instead sitting in the MAIN room where people are allowed to open cages and take the animals out?! No notes on the cage or anything. Then when I met my dog, I was getting him out of the cage, had a heck of a time with him, finally got him outside and all that when the neighbor to the shelter told me that the dog was BLIND! So I of course hurried up and told my mom that we had to adopt this poor dog, the shelter was overrun (they just busted a puppy mill and this was one of the breeding dogs). My mom called down and said we were absolutely interested in adopting this dog, they told her that she had to come now or never (it was 45 minutes away and by the time we would have made it, it would have been closed for the weekend). She said that we could pick it up on Tuesday (next day they'd be open) and they said nope, they'll put it down before then cuz nobody was going to adopt a blind dog... Like, hello, WE WANT TO!!! Finally we got them to agree to hold onto the dog a few more days (they already had them in there for a few days), mom called off work to go get the dog (again, stupid, stupid hours of operation) and called down to say we were on our way. They told her the dog was no longer there. We went down just to be 100% sure and to figure out where it went, and there he was, still in the same darn cage! We finally signed some stuff (no applications or anything) and as we were leaving they said "oh yeah, that dog is blind AND deaf" Like, great upkeep fellas. Great job on scaring us away from ever, ever again dealing with your crap.

 

[JRmom]

I'm a member of a JR forum and everyone there would freak out at all of your comments about shelters. That said.... I totally agree with you. I had a teenage cat disappear a few years ago and went to our Animal Shelter to look for him. Saw a lady (and I use the term loosely) I knew who was there looking to adopt a dog. She told the worker, "All my dogs died so I'm here to get a new one" and they proceeded to take her back to look at the dogs, no questions asked. WTF??? I also DO NOT agree with having to take any dog(s) you may currently have in to meet the new dog. I'm sorry, but that is a stressful situation - my God, the smell of fear alone would freak out any dog! I bought a Lab after trying to adopt one - but I refused to take my older dog into that crazy stressful situation.

Our HS is here is a no-kill shelter, but it's funny that 99% of the dogs they accept are pit bulls. I'm not trying to start a debate about pit bulls, there are plenty of good pit bull pets out there, but the reasoning behind a shelter that operates off of donations turning down an adoptable animal in favor of an "iffy" dog that requires months of rehab is beyond me.

 

[rebecca100]

I have only bought one dog in my life and right now I have 4 wonderful dogs. It seems to me that by finding unwanted dogs/cats or such that you are doing a good service and saved a lot of hassle all the way around. Possibly saved an animal from being in an overcrowded shelter and gave it a good situation also. I took in a pitt not too long ago that the owners had moved off and left him to fend for himself.