Do Dog Rescues Have an Unrealistic and Excessively Strict Approach to Rehoming?

bagginslover

Not if you don't know he's missing. If we were away and he escaped from kennels or whoever he was saying with, or if our house was broken into while we were at work and he ran off, we might not know for hours, possibly days or weeks if we were abroad. He has our numbers on his tags as well, as by law you have to have contact details on your dogs tags (microchips aren't enough, though there are a few exceptions for actual working dogs), so we could still be contacted, and I know the rescue would contact us immediately too.
When you adopt a dog from many rescues, ownership of the dog never fully passes to you. The rescue retains ownership, and you are more of a guardian. This is all detailed in the adoption contracts, and is done to safeguard the dogs future-they can take the dog back from you at any time if they feel it's warranted. I don't think it's a bad system at all, I know I'm not intentionally going to do anything that would warrant the removal of my dog, so that doesn't worry me in the slightest.

Charlie2011

Hi, i think this is a difficult one to call there are arguments for both sides.

We rescued our dog a year ago from the Dogs Trust. We had no problem with garden or leaving her for 2 long as my parter works shifts but some days she if left for 4 hours before i can get home at lunch to let her out. My friend also has a dog which she purchased from a bredder and he is left all day everyday and is taken for a walk at lunch and he is an extremely happy dog.(he also gets walked before and after work) Our dog loves her new home and since we have had here she is happy and healthy.

I think as long as the dog does not suffer with major separation issues and is not a young dog that needs allot of attention i think they would be happier in a loving home rather than being stuck in a kennel all day and only getting out for one walk a day! Im sure they have the dogs best interests at heart but at the end of the day most people have to work 9-5 as long as you can let them out and walk them at lunch i think most dogs would be happier knowing they have a loving home.

zaksmum

bagginslover wrote: »

Not if you don't know he's missing. If we were away and he escaped from kennels or whoever he was saying with, or if our house was broken into while we were at work and he ran off, we might not know for hours, possibly days or weeks if we were abroad. He has our numbers on his tags as well, as by law you have to have contact details on your dogs tags (microchips aren't enough, though there are a few exceptions for actual working dogs), so we could still be contacted, and I know the rescue would contact us immediately too.
When you adopt a dog from many rescues, ownership of the dog never fully passes to you. The rescue retains ownership, and you are more of a guardian. This is all detailed in the adoption contracts, and is done to safeguard the dogs future-they can take the dog back from you at any time if they feel it's warranted. I don't think it's a bad system at all, I know I'm not intentionally going to do anything that would warrant the removal of my dog, so that doesn't worry me in the slightest.

I was only speaking from my own experience. I'd immediately know if my dogs were missing! They doesn't go in kennels and I'm home all day with them.

And when I take on a dog, I want him to be MY dog, not still legally owned by anyone else.

bratz81

Can't say anything about dogs, but I know I had some issues getting a cat from some of the rescue centers I called at first.

First one wouldn't give us a kitten/cat as we lived in an 'abuse blackspot' even though we were going to keep it as an indoor car so wouldn't be out to be abused.

Another wouldn't give us a kitten/cat because my ex (who I was with at the time) had no experience with cats and I hadn't had a cat for a good few years. We were willing to buy books, whatever but was still a no.

Another said no because I had no preference over what type of cat. I didn't care if it was a girl/boy, or if it was black, white, ginger or anything - apparently this meant I didn't want a cat enough. I did, I just would rather pick one on 'personality' rather than looks!

Final place I tried had no issues, I went out to have a look, found one I instantly fell in lvoe with and him with me, and after some interviews etc he was homed with us. He's coming up on 6 now and is the happiest, most loved cat ever.

bagginslover

zaksmum wrote: »

I was only speaking from my own experience. I'd immediately know if my dogs were missing! They doesn't go in kennels and I'm home all day with them.

And when I take on a dog, I want him to be MY dog, not still legally owned by anyone else.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticising your opinion, just explaining my own
I'm not able to be at home all day with my dog, both my partner and I work full time, and where we work we don't always have great mobile reception. We've not had to put him in kennels yet, but we have a few events later in the year we cannot take him to (a wedding and a convention I've helped organise), knowing that if anything happens when we are 100's of miles away, he won't have to sit in the pound is worth hearing 5 mins later to us.
As for him not being ours, he is ours just as much as yours is yours. If you were to neglect your dog (which I know you wouldn't, just an example) it would be taken off you by someone, with us, he would simply be taken back to the rescue we got him from. This way they keep control of him for his whole life, not just for the one rescue.

catkins

Cat rescue centres are just as bad if not worse. We were told by almost all the ones we contacted that we could not have a cat because:-

We both worked!! Sorry aren't cats either out or asleep most of the day? Plus I only worked part time so cannot see the sense in that one.

We lived on too busy a road. No actually our road is not that busy.

We did not have a big enough garden. Don't almost all cats go outside of their own garden? My cats cover quite a large area - I am often very surprised when I see one of my cats quite a way from my house.

We have a dog! We were told by almost all the centres "We don't home cats to a house with a dog". Why not? When we got our dog as a puppy we had 6 cats. He has lived with cats all his life and is fine with them. He even lets them pinch his food!

We did eventually get a cat but just could not believe all the restrictions put in place by these centres. We became convinced that a lot of them really did not want to rehome the cats at all.

melbury

We have looked at getting rescue dogs - had one years ago and she was absolutely gorgeous - but now it is almost as difficult as adopting a child:eek: They really need to ease up a bit and think what is actually best for these dogs - a good loving home, or just being left in kennels.

We just end up getting a puppy. I hasten to add we are dog lovers - they are insured, have the run of the house, walked twice a day in the countryside and always come on holiday with us.

Shame really.

mutter

I suppose the real problem with both cat and dog rescues is that they often rely to a greater or lesser extent on volunteers who make subjective judgements about things like busy roads and big enough gardens etc.
Some of the rescues struggle to just keep afloat and don't have the time, expertise or inclination to train their volunteers, revisit their guidelines or check up on how they're being interpreted.
And of course, many of them wouldn't exist without the volunteer help, so it's a bit of a vicious circle.

I've had cats from Cat's protection, Celia Hammond and a local rescue (Raystede) and never had a problem, but judging by the rather scary cat-lady voluteers who've done home visits here, I can quite understand that some probably very good potential adopters get turned down.

rising_from_the_ashes

zaksmum wrote: »

I got the height of abuse from the co ordinator. She said she couldn't care less about the Yorkie, only the pup, and if I was that bothered about the health of the Yorkie "just wait till the damn thing dies before you get another dog!" (quote)!

OMG I am absolutely horrified at that - it's appalling!

I just tried a small local rescue near me and they seem to have jumped on the bandwagon of the larger ones - no workers:(.

I don't know how they don't realise that leaving people no option but to get pups as they can't rehome animals means that the issue of bad breeding etc is NEVER going to be resolved.:mad:

catkins wrote: »

We both worked!! Sorry aren't cats either out or asleep most of the day? Plus I only worked part time so cannot see the sense in that one.


We did not have a big enough garden. Don't almost all cats go outside of their own garden? My cats cover quite a large area - I am often very surprised when I see one of my cats quite a way from my house.


We have a dog! We were told by almost all the centres "We don't home cats to a house with a dog". Why not? When we got our dog as a puppy we had 6 cats. He has lived with cats all his life and is fine with them. He even lets them pinch his food!

I'm horrified by this too - my old boy was a rescue - a lovely local one and all the cats were fostered. He was in a home with literally hundreds of others, all wandering around - it was mad!

I went to see him and he came home with me then & there!

My current 2, I've had from 4 weeks each (not by design) - I'd take an older cat again but I have found that these 2 are so much easier than my old boy was having had them since they were so wee, I can literally do anything to them (tablets etc) which was practically impossible before!

Lil_Me_2

Friends of ours were told when they wanted to adopt a dog that they couldn't leave him for more than 4 hours, the rescue home then admitted that they left him from 21:00-07:00 every night locked in a cage!

I rang around 3 rescue homes before the 4th would let us adopt our cats. We both work full time and we don't have a cat flap therefore we're terrible owners! One insisted we had to have a landline phone, not sure what difference that makes to how we look after our cats.