Adoption approval and pet dogs

[cinnamon555]

hello
Can anybody tell me how likely approval is when you own dogs? My husband and I do not have any children and are wanting to adopt. We have 2 young dogs, a spaniel and retriever. I know lots of owners say it but our dogs are very well natured, they are friendly with all people, children and other dogs. They have always been great with children and babies and we would never leave them around any child without supervision. The thing that worries us is that they are young and full of energy. For example, if anyone arrives at our front door the two of them come dashing to the door tails wagging and the visitor then has to put up with lots of licks and sniffs for a minute or two. We have this image of a social worker coming to our home this happening and them giving us a big no and that being the end.

Don't worry too much. A lot of families have dogs and get approved, and there can be a lot of benefits to a child having pets around. There are a few breeds of dog they can get iffy about, but not yours

When you get assessed they will ask you if you adopt and the child does not get on well with the dogs at all, or if the dogs heaven forbid were to get aggressive, that you would rehome the dogs rather than disrupt the adoption. They will want an assurance of that I think.

Also you need to be aware of how some children especially traumatised ones can be completely oblivious to an animals needs. My DD2 loves animals but she used to follow my friends dog around grabbing it very hard so they could have a hug. She didn't mean any harm but didn't understand that she was hurting the dog. Now that dog is a lovely little thing but after a while of this, it did start snapping at DD so we had to seperate them sharpish. Even the nicest dog will get fed up eventually! That's harder when the dog and the child are in the same house. Is there anywhere in yours the dogs could go if they needed to be away from the children at all? Whatever happens, it would all be explored in the homestudy. You shouldn't get turned away because of it, and even if one agency get uptight about dogs there are others :)

I'm in Ireland, so it may be different, but we have a dog and it didn't mean we weren't approved for adoption. It did come up as an "issue" and we had to prove to the SW that we knew never to leave the child alone in a room with the dog, etc etc but it was fine. I think they need to hear you say out loud that much as you love your dogs, you understand that you won't trust them with the child and will make sure the child is safe at all times.

Both DH and I grew up with dogs so it would be strange not to have a dog as part of the family. Our SW was very un-doggy so we had to be careful not to gush about how gorgeous he is (and he is!). I think you just need to prove that you know that the dogs are on the lowest rung of the ladder and are not saying to the SW "my dogs are my babies" (even if you think this way!). There are loads of studies about the benefits to children of growing up with pets, find some of them and dazzle the SW with statistics.

We had two dogs when we adopted our daughters, 10 years ago, we had to reassure the sw that the dogs would be rehomed if they became aggresive etc.
Our sw was concerned that they were my surrogate babies which was not true, but did have to convince her on that.
During introductions we spent a lot of time slowly introducing the girls to the dogs, all was fine.
Hope all goes well for you.

We had to get a letter from our vet saying that our dogs had never been reported for aggressive behaviour and we had never discussed aggressive or anti social tendencies with him in relation to the dogs. We are lucky our DS loves the dogs and they are gentle with him even when they are being mauled or hugged to death!

lilka - You mentioned that a few breeds would mean you are not allowed to adopt, do you happen to know what breeds?

Seems very unfair to judge the dogs breed rather than temprement, unless we are talking about illegal breeds obviously.

No personal experience but our friends have recently adopted a young sibling group (all were under 5 at adoption) whilst owning 3x hounds of the baskervilles rather indulged pooches. I'd say that keeping the dogs and making sure they are well-behaved (classes etc...) would say more than giving them away at this stage as it signals your commitment to the beings you look after.