To think some rescue centres make it a bit too hard to adopt a dog

[Blackheartz]

No young children
No working outside of the home.

Which essentially leaves SAHPs who have older kids, and people who have retired.

Obviously, they have to ensure the dogs go to good homes, I get that. But it does make me wonder how anybody manages to adopt a dog!

A friend of mine is a qualified Veterinary Nurse. She and her husband have a large enclosed back garden but the front garden is open lawn and all of a piece with the neighbours and goes to the road. Because the front garden is not enclosed they were not allowed a Dogs Trust dog. Had they said they didn't have a front garden, I think they would have been allowed one. Luckily a few months later a pair of dogs came into the practice she works at looking for a home and she took them. She is the best dog owner I know in every respect. It's crazy.

Bull. Our front garden isn't enclosed and we have a DT dog

YABU.
Jesus. You'd rather bring a dog that might have so many fear based aggression triggers from its crap former life in to a home with young children than be told 'no'.
You'd rather a dog that's needs considerable work on their issues be left home alone every day while you're at work - they need settling in, they need stability, they need to learn that you will come back when you go out - at the very least that requires leave from your job.
Rescue dogs need work, they need understanding, you have to figure them out. They are hugely rewarding but there's nothing worse than the idiots who take them on an uninformed whim only to return them to the centres because they can't cope, they just screw the dogs up that little bit more.
I'd like breeders to be as discriminatory about who they sell to. Irresponsible greedy people.

Different rescues have different rules, it's true some have blanket bans for certain things just because it's easier for them. Often it is because they want to make sure the prospective adopters have considered the commitment and are matched with the most suitable pet for the best chance of success. There's no point adopting a needy dog to a home where the people are out 12 hours a day, or a shy cat to a home with four noisy children - no one is going to be happy, least of all the pet. Some have more flexibility to consider each adopter individually but neither a small charity that relies on a handful of volunteers nor a large charity that receives dozens of adoption enquiries has the resources.

As for the donations, most of the time this barely covers the costs incurred. I.e. a course of vaccinations is a minimum of £35 per pet, plus neutering, microchipping, food (and litter in the case of cats) often for several weeks, heating and transport costs, etc. And that's for a healthy pet - more often than not, the animals at rescues come with various health issues and vet bills can often be hundreds of pounds for each pet (there is no pet insurance for animals waiting at rescues!) Apart from the largest and well-known, most animal charities are entirely volunteer run and don't receive many donations from the public.

Does anyone who is refused by an adoption centre say "actually they are right, we'll wait"

We did, we did got turned down for adoption because dad was too young, they only placed dogs with families where the children were 5 years old or older.

We waited two years and tried again.

The rescues I met with were really nice and even though DH and I both work outside of the home we were still approved on our home check because the house wouldn't be empty for over 2 hours at a time.

Our only problem was that the dogs which could be homed with young children and cats were snapped up really quickly so took a long time to find a suitable one we could take on.

I think that rescue dogs and cats are different issues. I tried to get a rescue kitten some years ago. I had a dog at the time and worked. Having said that I've had cats and dogs all my life, so understand their care needs etc etc. The local cat rescues insisted that I had to have 2 kittens - I didn't want 2. Despite appeals in the local papers how they were inundated with kittens they still insisted that I had 2.

So I bought one from a local notice board, she was lovely!

Completely agree. Crazy! Which is why I didn't even bother trying when we wanted a kitten.

We got our lovely boy a little over 3 years ago. Most pampered baby on the street, and we hope he has a long, happy life with us.

I think you are being a bit unreasonable. There are tons of rescues out there and some are happy to rehome animals to people who works/have kids etc. I think the larger ones - RSPCA and such like have more fixed rules as you would expect being larger organisations.

We rescued 2 dogs from a local rescue who do not have fixed rules. They take each dog and family on their own merits and try to ensure the best outcome. With bigger dogs (or very bouncy untrained ones), they would ask for older children - little ones can get knocked over. Sometimes, they will say there must be another dog in the family to help the new one settle (this was the case for our boy who was used to being with others), other times, no dogs or a quiet home with no kids are what is needed.

DH works from home so ours are rarely left for any length of time, but a friend of mine also adopted from them and both her and her husband work full time. One of them is able to pop home at lunch and where this is not possible the dog goes to day care. All perfectly acceptable to the rescue. They did a home visit but only really checked the garden to see if we had a high fence (we do) - our girl has form for escaping! Having an 8 year old DS was no issue at all in our case. I can see why living in a flat might be problematic as it is not just a matter of taking them for walks, some rescues do have a fair few accidents to start with in a new environment even if house trained so the ability to keep popping them outside is a massive help in getting the message across.

I got my dog(s) from local rspca, they were fine, at the time both DH and I were working f/t and we had two kids age 7&9. We arranged the the dog went with DH to work some days (nice walk at lunchtime) but dog was often at home for a few hours by herself. No problems raised to that arrangement.
Cat from local rescue, no home visit, reasonable fees.
I can totally see why the rescues put these rules in place, it is to protect both people and the animals, but falling slightly short of being an ideal home does mean many people then will source an alternative way which might not be ideal.

It depends on the rescue. We were refused by blue cross because of small children. But got one from cats protection. I know why they do it though. Rescue animals might have history so that aren’t compatible with young children. Our first rescue cat which we got pre children were no good with babies and toddlers. She was vicious and had scratched DC1 when she crawled too close. After that we were careful we never left them together in a room unsupervised. New cat was very good. We visited with toddler DC2 and we can see instantly mog wasn’t scared by loud and boisterous children. Cats protection didn’t want home visit either.

At the end of the day they can’t rehome a pet who could attack a young childe.

It's always boggled my mind why the make adoptions so hard. I live in a flat, 1st floor with small children and my cat loves life. She has doggie visitors once a month and loves them too. There to anal. Much easier to buy so I do know.

People that flounce off all offended and buy a dog aren't ideal rescuers. Some people are incapable of seeing the imperfections of their situations.

I did a home check recently for a rescue. The potential adopters already had a dog that they clearly adored, but it was really fat. When we were talking about which vet they used they told me then said their vet told them their dog was fat and they laughed because he obviously doesn't know much about that breed. (I never commented on the size of the dog to them, just fed it back to the rescue so they could make a decision). My last check on the rescue' form was the garden. A whole fence panel had blown down. I politely mentioned that we'd probably need to come back and see the fence when it was repaired and they got all huffy that they'd owned dogs for years and thought they were helping a dog in need of a home, can't believe the rescue would say no etc. What was the rescue to do? Risk the dog getting run over, or offend the potential adopters?

I'm trying to rescue a cat or a pair of cats. Lifelong experience of having pets. (Mainly cats, dogs and hamsters). No-one will let us rescue as DD is only 7. I have to wait till she's 10! I've already waited 2 years since feeling ready. I'm not sure I can wait another 3 so will probably end up buying kittens.
We've tried all local, not so local and brand name rescues.
At the moment I get my "fix" by looking after 4 neighbourhood cats when owners away. I also borrow 2 dogs that belong to a friend. I'm part of their pack now!

I can see both sides. However I can agree (to an extent) about cats. I volunteered for a rescue for a number of years and they really wanted cats to go to homes with 'safe' gardens. However I also saw so many cats confined to cages 24 hours a day when there were people in flats offering homes - it made no sense (I say this looking at my cat who only ventures outside from 01 May until mid September and who sleeps in her armchair for 22.5 hours a day.

I live in the countryside, and part of my garden is boundried by a river. I am not considered appropriate for a rescue dog as we don't have a fence all the way round. I have had several dogs, including one that was rehomed to me, but will probably end up buying a puppy as rescues won't even consider us. It's a shame as we have acres of well fenced land and have safety kept dogs here for years, but they can't see past the river bank.

Yanbu. Its silly. Dog or cat in a nice home or a shelter and in the case of the rspca being put down.

I'd ask any of you to volunteer for an animal rescue and that might change you opinion. Quite honestly we never struggled to re-home a cat or dog due to our guidelines. We did turn people away for many of the reasons posted here and animals were still re-homed relatively quickly to homes that fitted in with our guidlines and they went on to have wonderful lives. The rules are in place because it massively reduces the amount of animals we have returned to us. People typically giving up their pets give us reasons such as "my house/flat is too small" "they don't like to be left alone when I'm at work" "they're too much to deal with, with the kids as well" etc. Why on earth would we waste our time rehoming these animals into the same type of home they came from?

I couldn't adopt a cat because I live on a road.

Who doesn't live on a road?

Why on earth would we waste our time rehoming these animals into the same type of home they came from? hmm

Because all people are different!

I agree.
We looked for a suitable puppy for ages and finally found one.
Spoke to the lady and she said we sounded ideal ( we really were) and we could have a homecheck a few days after that but MUST collect the puppy from a location 3 hours drive away the following weekend.
I explained that we had a weekend away booked but were prepared to come home early on the Sunday to go and get the puppy Sunday evening ( so a 2 hour drive home then a 3 hour trip to get puppy and a 3 hour trip home) but that wasn’t acceptable and we were told that if we were that bothered we would cancel our weekend away at the Holiday cottage we had booked with family.
This came on the back of being told by another rescue that we could have a certain puppy, then couldn’t, then could and then couldn’t again.
We went and bought one from a breeder.

khajiit13 I do volunteer at a rescue centre and I foster animals in my home. It's not the type of home that is your problem i.e one with kids or a flat but the type of people! Normal people take the size of their property and the work involved into account before adopting. A blanket no to anyone with kids because some people with kids return animals helps no one.

Battersea wouldn't let my colleague adopt as they worked outside the home. We are allowed to bring dogs into the office so it would never have been left alone in the house during the day, but there wasn't a box on the form for that it seems, so they got rejected.

YANBU. I know some people who were rejected because they didn't have a bedroom for the dog. Their children shared a room, surely a dog doesn't need a room of its own! And this was in New York City, where space is at a premium.

I had a bad experience with adopting 2 cats from RSPCA despite having been a responsible cat owner for years - cost me a fortune and they were beyond judgemental
Now I always try local vets and small ads
My last cat cost me less than a £100 and that included neutering micro chipping and vaccinations and kitten check up from my local vet

Same with cats - we bought our two. Lovely well looked after girls.