Tuesday, February 28, 2006
What else can we do?
We are sometimes criticized for not helping animals that are truly in need. "Others" feel that groups like ours should be rescuing only animals that are truly in need or rescue (i.e., animals that are going to die) rather than taking adoptable dogs. They say that taking adoptable animals from city or county shelters doesn't help and just makes those shelters look bad because they are left with "all the dogs no one wants." What they don't get is that if we take all the dogs that no one wants, then we don't do any adoptions and then we can't help any other shelter or animal in need.On the flip side, our adopters sometimes criticize us for not providing the most perfect dogs to visit. Dogs without any issues. Dogs that can live in apartments, with kids, with cats and with one short walk a day. No one wants the dog with slight possession issues, or dog aggression, or medical problems, or dogs that are too hyper.
So, our "peers" want us to take more dogs with issues and our clients want us to take less? So what do we do???
We try to do both.
We try to have dogs that the average dog owner can adopt. AND we try to help city and county shelters by taking dogs that might in fact be fine dogs, but are either too shut down or too scared or too untrained in their current situation.
Sometimes a few weeks with us allows them to shine. Sometimes it just makes the bad things more obivous.
Yesterday, we went to a local shelter and took 6 canines.
- One dog that was not available to the public since it was too scared and under socialized.
- One dog was an older shepherd mix that was super freaked out in the kennel and wasn't available to the public either.
- One dog that would have been put up for adoption, but it also wasn't the greatest of dogs.
- We also took an 80 pound cropped ear pit bull.
- And lastly, we took two underage pups that needed some fostering to make it to the age when they could be spayed or neutered.
Are any of these dogs available to the public now? Nope. It will be a couple weeks for all of them.
Did we take the cute cuddlies available to the public? No. Do the groups who see themselves as being the "real" rescue groups (i.e., the folks who criticize us for being too strict) see that. Nope.
Do they see the dogs that we have had for months that we took when no other group would touch them? Nope. Do I care? Sometimes, but not too much really. We'll just continue to do what we think we should do. What is right for the dogs, for our clients, for our local shelters.
What else can we do?
