For being fed up that some charities make it it impossible to adopt despite insisting that they are ‘inundated’ with dogs?

[GreekDogRescue]

A well-established dog rescue charity I used to fund neutering programmes for and supported big time are desperate for fosterers and adopters. When I moved to a house with a big (fenced) garden, I offered to foster 5 times (they put up beseeching posts all the time in social media) but they completely ignored me. I’m at home all day, am middle aged, retired, no kids visiting, have help but now foster and adopt from other charities as presumably they think I’m ‘not up to it’.

Then out of the blue 2 weeks ago they messaged to ask if I will foster a specific
dog; I agreed and said when would it be arriving from Greece. No response.

Now I see the same dog advertised on Facebook with no interest. Charity says they are desperate for homes but nobody is applying. Nice sister in law applied but was ignored. Go figure! The trouble is people end up going to breeders which compounds the problem.

Needless to say I no longer send them any money which I suspect was the motive for their message anyway. I now support rescues who have a pragmatic approach to rehoming.

But seeing this rescue plus others constantly posting about how desperate they are for homes while ignoring genuine homes is really maddening.

That's dreadful! I'd contact their manager and feed this back to them.

I always cut them a lot of slack as nobody takes a salary and most of them have jobs on top, but they e been going for over 40 years and are well established.
one of the problems is that the rehoming is run by very opinionated old ladies who have such a stringent rehoming criteria (no dogs in London; not near a road or rail away; not near an open body of water; must be home all day - one of them even refused to rehome to anyone who didn’t let their dog on the bed and as for children you can imagine what they think about them!)
I just regret we gave them so much money!

Yep YANBU, has been going on for years. Ridiculously stringent criteria leading to more people buying instead

Could you manage a Neapolitan mastiff?
There’s a long thread in my local south London Nextdoor from a woman who is desperately trying to rehome one. He’s reactive and no no kill shelter will take him.

Unfortunately I’ve got 7 now plus fostering for a Romanian charity so hands are full. Hopefully someone will see this thread who can help.

I’ve told this story on here before but years and years ago I applied to a rescue. During the phone registration they asked if we had children in the home. I said no that we didn’t have children nor would we be having them.

I was turned down on the basis that I may change my mind about having kids!

This drives me nuts too. I was refused dogs from local charities because I work, and I have cats. This seemed such a sweeping, inflexible decision. I WFH a lot, and when in the office my BF works here - my dogs are rarely alone; we carefully intro’d the cats to the dog(s) and there has never been an issue - it’s ridiculous to ban all dogs from all households with a cat! I am so sad there are so many charities that would rather dogs languished in shelters than consider a home that is allegedly slightly less than perfect.
I adopted dogs from abroad in the end, am so glad I did, and will continue to do so.

YANBU, I wonder the same thing. I offered to adopt a cat, I have a home with garden and work from home full time, also live with partner who is most of the time around, but I failed the question ‘will the cat be alone for 4+ hours at any time’. My answer was that usually not, but I really couldn’t commit to never be out for more than 4 hours for the next 10+ years. (Who can?)

If you've already got 7 dogs, maybe they think you're overcrowded.

We were planning on adopting another cat - we had one. The charity visited the house - lectured us on how to look after the new cat - we'd had two before. Told us that as our child was 5 we couldn't have a kitten - fair enough but then went on to tell us as we had a cat flat we couldn't adopt a cat as we were not suitable - at this point our 5 year old cat appeared and sat in the middle of the room! Anyway someone local couldn't look after their cat so we took it in - thank goodness they didn't give it to the charity as it would never have found a home.

I find most animal rehoming shelters completely unrealistic on their expectations of prospective owners. Unless you are a jobless hermit who stays at home all day with a 5 acre garden, no children, no other pets and no social life the ones near me will 100% turn you down.

We tried a few dachsund recues and other well known rescues. Main pages all said we won't even look at your application if both adults work.
We work opposite shifts. The most a dog would be on its own would be an hour.
We now have a lovely well adjusted 11 month old puppy who we've had from 7 weeks who wants for nothing.

I've had a rescue dog in the past, 20 yrs ago. Practically no questions asked other than would I love him. Cost me 30 quid and the kennels owner told me to take him own and make him scrambled egg on toast. Had him 14 years.

This. You have to be an unemployed millionaire. Most won’t let you adopt if you’re out of work as they say you can’t afford it, but then you can’t go out of the house either!

I see your point but I applied when I moved here when I only had 2. Some years later I now have 7 but 3 of them are very elderly and just sleep most of the day. Also it’s a big house and garden so plenty of room. I’m not looking for anymore now, it’s just they contacted me to ask and when I agreed to help didn’t bother to read my reply

I am an unemployed millionaire lol, and they STILL didn’t respond! You can’t win!

100%. Both my sisters ended up purchasing dogs after they were turned down multiple times by rescue dog charities for very picky reasons. We grew up with dogs and their dogs are loved and well looked after.

Perhaps they’re looking for billionaires now 😉

Quite the omission from the opening post. You can say this for any thread on here, but I'd really like to hear the other side of this one.

I just snorted at this!! It’s like these charities are scams.

That must be where we’re all going wrong 🤣

I'm often in the fence about strict rehoming criteria. I've seen a lot of inadvisable placements and they're miserable and predictably fail.

When I was last looking I thought I ticked most boxes - good fence and gate, somebody at home all day, experienced dog owner with references, happy to take something older or with issues. But I had a cat. She was used to dogs and I would have been sensible able introducing them but because they couldn't cat test dogs (not exactly ethical on the cat, which I understand) they wouldn't consider it unless the dog had a known history of living with cats. Out of 140+ dogs they had at the time, not one of them did. Yet while I was waiting to be told this I saw them second stage interview three people for dogs that IMHO were very clearly not going to work out. For example one couple were first time owners, and had a frail elderly mother who would have the dog sometimes including walking them- the dog they were matching then up with was large, young and bouncy, pretty unhandled with behavioural issues and a tendency to lunge at strangers, and had a multiple bite history. It was very clearly not a good match, and the other two interviews i watched were the same. It was bizarre.

My local cat shelter is like this. They’re always begging on Facebook for adopters saying they’ve got hundreds of cats needing a home but they want you to pay £300 for the privilege which alienates a lot of people! I decided to finally take the plunge and applied. They asked for a video tour of my house! Which I did then never heard anything from them. They can’t get adopters because of the massive fee. Cats protection fee is something like £35. It’s really no wonder they don’t have the funds or the space for all the bloody cats that need a home.

I have applied to be a foster for 2 specific dog breeds. Filled in the forms, passed my home checks and months later, nothing. Still on Facebook saying they are drowning in these dogs, turning dogs away, need fosters, yet I haven’t heard from them in months.

saving up to buy a dog, which saddens me as I wanted to help and give an abandoned dog a good home.

I only had 2 small old dogs when I first applied a few years ago as per a previous response.
This charity ignored my offers then asked me to foster recently and I agreed to help as they are really desperate, but they didn’t respond yet are still advertising the dog.
But thanks for your input.

Oops that response was for @thedancingbear