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!

If you can find a vaccinated, spayed, chipped puppy or kitten free on Gumtree then go for it. The reality is that, if these charities don't cover their running costs they will go bust and the animals they care for will be passed to another, similar charity or put down. You are not the intended recipient of their charity, the animal is.

Before I adopted my cat from Battersea I priced up how much it would be to spay/vaccinate/microchip/flea/worm a cat in the event I obtained one from somewhere else. Iirc the cost came out somewhere in the region of £200. Cat cost me £65 I think it was. I have no issue with paying that amount of money tbh. The thing I do have an issue with is when charities like CHAT come out and talk about how many hundreds and hundreds of kittens they have looking for new homes but if you contact them they have an answering machine and no-one ever calls back.

I would never buy a kitten from gumtree and to be absolutely honest I cannot understand why anyone wouldn’t have their cats neutered at the first opportunity, even when I was a child all our cats were spayed as early as was possible. but some of the charities making it so incredibly difficult to rescue means that people will go on to the likes of gumtree because kittens are readily available on there, and while they do that it doesn’t deter people from allowing their cats to have cuuuute kittens and so the cycle continues.

YANBU. I ended up just lying about my work hours!

The donation isn't high. £120 we paid for our dog- fully spayed, vaccinated and had several trips to the vet before we got her plus unlimited access to behaviouralists for the lifetime of the dog.

That's great value!

Had good and very bad experiences with rescue groups. Unfortunately, there are quite a few big egos and neurotic people volunteering who can be on a power trip. Case in point was when I helped my mother adopt another rescue sighthound. Initially, we contacted the same rescue group where we had gotten an older, lovely but several traumatised greyhound from that my mother nourished back to health and that lived till a good 15 years old. By the time, she wanted to adopt another hound, a different person had taken over who was obnoxious and ageist. My mother is very fit, at home all day, has plenty of experience with the desired breed, lives in the middle of a beautiful rural place with over a hectare of securely fenced garden over 6 feet tall. Literally, text book requirements for adopting a sighthound. We contacted a group in Spain instead who spoke to my mother’s vet and a local person who did a home check. She reported back to the rescue group that my mother grows her own organic vegetables and actually cooked meals for the dog from scratch. The Spanish rescuer joked with us saying that he wouldn’t mind getting adopted alongside with my mother’s new dog. Some organisations have become like big self-serving companies that seem more about keeping their jobs going and less about actual rescue. Personally, I found smaller rescue organisations that have to compete for donations are often a bit less arrogant. That said, among smaller groups, you get the occasional do-gooder with a Messiah complex who can't let go of the rescued dogs and thinks no-one else is good enough. Ironically, a few months after my mother had her new lovely Spanish Greyhound, the original rescue group contacted her, saying that they would consider her after all. We won't support them again though and my mother cancelled her generous donations and supports other groups.

I do homechecking and transports for animal charities and yes we do ask to go upstairs etc. You'd be amazed by the hoarders that have been discovered hiding animals upstairs!

Some rescues do take their criteria too far but it is done to benefit the animal in the long run.