Tam Cordingley © 2006 TheDogPlace.org - Certainly, adopting a dog destined to be destroyed is a good thing. None of us want to see dogs destroyed for lack of good homes. However adopting just to be adopting is not a good thing. We decry the puppy in a window syndrome, yet in the next breath we put cute dogs all over the TV screens, on every available street corner, in every pet shop, and beg people to adopt. We dislike selling puppies at flea markets and in pet shops but what makes it all right to sell dogs at adopt-a-thons? In none of these cases are prospective homes evaluated.

One of the differences between responsible breeders and puppy millers is that we, as responsible breeders, screen homes. Few of the adoption organizations that work the mass market do that. Even fewer really check out the homes with onsite checks and continuing support for the new owners.

What I see are the dogs that are adopted by Dad and the kids at the mall adopt-a-thons, going home to Mom saying “get rid of that dog”. They are too embarrassed to return it to the nice ladies who were so happy to have the dog adopted, so it goes to the shelter in the next town, if it is lucky. Or it is put out on the road, or given to the family next door. None of these people who may end up with this hapless dog have any emotional or financial investment in the dog. It is now counted again as a part of the pet overpopulation stats.

This poor dog is more confused and either in another shelter or out on the street to be picked up again. He has not been trained, just dumped again. Then the process starts over again, maybe this new owner keeps the dog long enough to be spayed or neutered, maybe not. This owner, who took the dog on a whim and has no investment in the dog, gets a new job out of town. Can’t take the dog. So back to the shelter it goes. To be counted yet again. Now we have one dog counted as three.

No one argues that adoptions are not a good thing, but if a dog is to be adopted out it should be permanently identified. Either tattooed and that tattoo registered or micro-chipped and that microchip registered. All of this ferrying of dogs multiple states away removes control from the rescue organizations locally. When Susie , rescue coordinator in Alabama, finds a good home in New Hampshire many people along the way are involved. These rescue railroads and transports sound like a heroic effort. I disagree. I feel these are kindness gone awry.

A homeless dog is looking for a new master, or guardian if you prefer. When a kind person takes the dog and takes it for a ride, gives it water and shelter and possibly food, the dog gives a great sigh of relief and begins getting to know it’s rescuer. Then a few hours later it loses that home and gets shuttled off to another stranger to begin the process all over again. By the time this happens 3 or 4 times the poor dog doesn’t know which end is up and he has compounded the original loss of home many times. This dog is more damaged and more anxious with every transfer. A dog that is already anxious, possibly had numerous changes of food and water, and is stressed by a long car ride is certainly not ready to settle in to a new home with no digestive upsets. He is likely to have loose stools, doesn’t know any of the rules, and is given to a person who didn’t want the dog badly enough either to pay for its transport or to go get it. This is a recipe for failure.

How many of these dogs end up again in the local pound? No one knows. The homes are not checked out, at most someone asks a few questions, often not that. If the dog messes all over the floors, snarls at the kids, jumps of the Grandma, or kills the hamster, off it goes. The new owners were willing, maybe even anxious, to take the dog if someone delivered it but weren’t eager enough to have the dog that they were willing to provide safe and secure transportation.

I’m not speaking from a position of little knowledge. I am the former manager of a large Humane Society shelter in California. We did screen homes, and do onsite home checks, and had a trainer on staff to help with problems, and still had dogs that recycled every few months. We were local so we knew the dogs, and knew why they had failed in their last home. If we were sending dogs all over the country not one person would ever know their history. They would just continue bouncing from home to home, continuing the same behavior that cost them the first home, and being counted again and again, until finally they become so damaged that someone was kind enough NOT to adopt them out again. Someone had the intestinal fortitude to put this poor animal to sleep.

Misguided kindness, without considering the long term consequences, can do much more harm than good. If we are going to adopt out permanent ID is as important as spaying, much more important than neutering. If we are going to adopt out let’s make it mandatory that the new home have a secure fence. No fence No dog. Period. If we can’t put a dog is a great home it is a misguided kindness to put it in just any home that will take it. There are much worse things than a quick and painless death and one of them is a long slow death of the spirit. For a dog the scarring that comes from repeated separation from their people is a terrible thing, if it can’t be a permanent home maybe no home is better.

~thc/2006

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