To ask how we’re supposed to adopt and not shop if rescues are so strict?

[elisabethhh]

We were trying to find a dog to rescue but have been turned down by all due to us having a ‘young’ child (I don’t think 10 is very young) and working full time although dog would go to work with DH twice a week and be left for 4.5 hours tops the other 3 days. Surely a loving home where it’s occasionally left alone is better than a cage?

And this is why there are so many dogs at rescue centres. We go to work for 8 hours and dogs are left alone. Never had any issue. In fact I had dogs for the last 30 years and never had an issue. 2-3 walks a day, plenty of love.

This stupidity of dog should not be left alone for more than 4 hours or ideally not at all encourages back door breeders to produce puppies after puppies, and silly people go and buy them.

10 year old too young for a dog? Bonkers, absolute bonkers.

House conditions etc must be checked and people owning dogs should be registered / pay license. This should weed out bad people a bit. Stopping working people from adopting is ridiculous. I met work from home people who had dogs and did a lot less with them than we do and we work.

Our dog came from dog’s trust. They have strict criteria but in practice found them helpful. The dog was approved for children age 11 and over. Dc was 3 weeks off 11 but it wasn’t a problem at all. We did both dog visits in 1 day at their suggestion as we had travelled several hours and let us do our dog adoption class at the local centre to us. Yes we did have to drop everything to collect, they only did a weekday collection but in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t a problem. Guidance was not to leave dog for more than 4 hours.

We were turned down by a rescue home when we wanted kittens as we wouldn’t be at home to feed them 5 times a day. I only worked part time for a few hours a day but apparently the feed couldn’t be left down for them you had to supervise! Bizarre, you’d think they were babies!

I bought in the end although didn’t want to. Bought from a good home that we checked out first.

And our lovely kittens were and are absolutely fine were adequately fed and are spoilt and loved and looked after very well in mine and our vets opinion! They really need to change their criteria unless all the animals are being homed. I think the criteria is way too strict and not practical.

Realistically, very few people have a partner at home all day AND have no young kids--most SAHPs are parents of young kids. Maybe they only want retired couples to adopt? But only ones under a certain age, presumably.

Saw this in the paper this morning:

"Will we stop gorging on “cute” in 2019? Has the designer puppy craze peaked? Because one of my favourite dog rescue centres, Many Tears in Carmarthenshire, is swamped. It has 300 dogs in-house, another 200 fostered and the phone rings constantly because “breeders” can’t sell their dogs. They have bred too many. Demand for cute crossbreeds such as jugs (Jack Russell/pug) and shichons (shitzu/bichon) has caused massive oversupply. Sylvia Van Atta, its founder, tells me that some breeders want to offload entire litters: living creatures reduced to an overproduced batch of Hello Kitty keyrings.

TV shows such as Modern Family haven’t helped by sparking a boom in demand for pedigree French bulldogs because Stella (the show’s dog) is sweet. Just as the Duchess of Cambridge can spark a run on a Zara frock, people want a breeder to produce ones like they saw on telly. If you’re thinking of getting a new dog, please consider rescues like Sylvia’s. She’s open over Christmas: manytearsrescue.org"

I had the same experience getting a cat. My flat was too small apparently (although way bigger than its cage) and had outside access. I happened to be moving so I applied a few months later and then I lived too near a road. Too near a road? Who doesn’t? It wasn’t even a busy road. Very picky.

Ugh tell me about it. I'm a long-term cat owner. I had five, and lost my old girl aged 19 a couple of years ago. After a few months I went to my local rescue to register for a kitten as in my experience, bringing adult cats together can be problematic (though I have always managed to make a success of it in the past). I explained that DH and I both work from home, we live in a rambling house with lots of space for the cats to have their own zones if they want it, in a rural area, and all our cats are insured and registered with the local vet's healthcare scheme for all worm / flea / booster meds. I also explained that I am committed to cats and I work hard to ensure mine are happy and healthy, and would like to offer a rescue a home. They told me that I had enough cats, and that they wouldn't register me. Speechless.

That's a lot of time to leave a dog everyday don't get any dog.

I was turned down for cat adoption by a rescue (to be fair our road is busy but we have a huge garden and plenty of safe space for them at the back of the house).

I ended up rehoming one from a family who had to move and couldn't take her. If we hadn't adopted her, they were going to take her to the RSPCA, where she may well have been put down. So it's still way better than buying a kitten. People have to rehome their pets for so many different reasons, so there are always adverts online for animals needing a new home.

I can see both sides, rescues have rules for a reason but sometimes I think they go too far. I have been put off homing a kitten because the rescue centre only home in pairs. I would give a fantastic home to a cat but I don’t want 2. We also didn’t get rescue rabbits because I was told they needed permanent access to a 6ft x 8ft outdoor run and a hutch wasn’t really enough, a garden shed type thing would be preferable. Again, we would have given some rabbits a great home with spacious hutch and lots of outdoor run time but I couldn’t provide sheds and permanently fenced areas. I think the rescue centres alienate perfectly good homes and drive people to buying pets. Our vet agrees with me.

Hi. Try a smaller place. We rescued our greyhounds from Wimbledon Greyhound Rescue, Search, they are amazing xx

I got the brush off from Cats Protection on first contact over the phone, asking if they had a pair of older cats I could rehome, despite explaining that I had rehomed older cats before and had suitable, secure premises. The woman I spoke was so condescending and rude that it still rankles. Consequently, as I mentioned upthread, I looked elsewhere and ended up with kittens as the shelter was overrun with them! Worked out well for me and kitties in the end but some of these organisations should be more careful about their public-facing staff.

AA DOG RESCUE
Won't turn you down.
Currently have dogs and new puppies.
Encourage adoptions with young children