Quest for Dog
When did adopting a dog become as difficult as buying a house?!? For better than a month I have been filling out forms, sending e-mails, and answering questions about everything from my yard to my exercise habits. And I still don’t have a dog to show for all my efforts!
When I started this process, it was long before the uproar about Ellen DeGeneres and Iggy, but the press and the hype has aggravated my already ruffled feathers. On the one hand I can understand some screening to make sure an animal and his/her new family are a good fit, but at what price? I cannot understand how making reasonable people answer five million questions, fill out credit reports and demonstrate their own obedience is saving any animal lives. The process has become so involved and difficult that I no longer want to help or deal with ANY of these so-called rescue organizations.
The problem is human, and animal, nature. I understand the theory that these rescue agencies want to make sure the placement is a good one. They ask lots of questions, make you roll over, heel, play dead, and try to make sure that the home to be provided is wholesome and beneficial to the animal. But in practice I have come to believe that these agencies are indirectly responsible for even more animal deaths because it takes so long for them to place the animals they already have.
Why? Because no amount of questioning, no amount of screening, and no amount of forcing humans to jump through hoops is going to guarantee that every animal placed is going to get along with its new family.
How can I be so sure? Well, if we’ve got a 50% divorce rate between people, what makes anyone think that incorporating a pet into a family is going to be without glitches?
Are these “rescue agencies” really that gullible? Based on what I have seen this past month, it certainly looks that way.
Looks like I’m just going to have to get my dog the old fashioned way. Anyone want to go to the pound with me?
B.
December 28th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Bronwen, did you check out “Pet Adoption Fund” on Deering Avenue in Canoga Park? We adopted two of our dogs from there years ago (early 1996 actually); they do ask questions but at least then they weren’t overwhelming. They do pound rescues and operate on a shoestring.
By the way, I had several classes with you at Learning Tree U (one was “Optimizing Images for the Web”) and still feel I learned more from you than anyone else. Thanks!!