Five hours and Bitter: I hope you've managed to find a dog now. Your experience with rescues is so different to mine: I took my children to Dogs' Trust in Leeds in the holidays. I had already been online and didn't think there were any dogs we could have as none were suitable for young children (ages 5,6 & 7). I just wanted to register, have a look around, and prepare the kids for the process. However, once I'd spoken to some staff members and they realised that I'm fairly sensible and an experienced owner, several dogs that were previously only available to homes with teenagers children became available to me. We were also shown the puppy rooms which had about 6 we could have chosen from - very young puppies are not put up on the website. We could have had any number of staffie crosses but chose not to because we had had a rescue staffie cross previously, as well as a rescue GHD: I had had enough of people grabbing their dogs and crossing the road to avoid us. We ended up with a 5 month old lurcher type. When we collected him we had to attend a talk about puppy care along with some other families, all of which had young children.
Sorry this has gone on a bit but I think the point I'm trying to make is that it might be better to go to rescue centres and meet the people who run them, otherwise you are just another name on a form. They also need to meet your children as one 5 yr old might be great around dogs whereas another might inadvertantly wind them up. The Leeds centre is quite a long way from us but it was worth the trip - I don't think we'd have a dog now if we hadn't gone.