Haha, so much crap spouted on this thread.
I've got two pedigree Labradors, both came from breeders with wonderful pedigrees. Both were too much for their first owners and were dumped in rescues as yearlings. The second dog was too much for his second and third home too. We got him from a Labrador rescue with a fantastic reputation when he was 14 months. They never home checked us or spoke to our vet. They made us sign a contract to say we'd neuter him, but they never checked we did, in fact they never checked on him at all. He was 100% bonkers and hyperactive, he ran us ragged. But we kept going and after about 18 months had the most wonderful dog. But the rescue were appalling.
A couple of years ago I worked with a lady that imported rescues from Romania. I was sceptical, very like many of the posts on here, but I followed her on Facebook. It turned out that she did a lot of hard work matching dogs to owners. A few months later a video was posted on her page of an adorable little face in a cage. I found myself putting my name down, despite not having any intention of getting a third dog. Three months later my dog arrived.
She came over in a van, which took 24 hrs. They go to kennels for 48 hrs in Kent, where Defra can check them if they want ( they have tons of injections and treatments before coming over). Then they go back on the. Van and are given to owners at drop off points. Our dog was very nervous, particularly of men. She'd been found in the woods by the dog catchers, who had been very rough with her and her puppies. She was only a year old. She didn't know what a bed was, she slept on the doormat for a week. It took two months to housetrain her. But she's been the sweetest, most lovely dog. Last week we were out at a country event and a little toddler got away from his parents and ran over to her without us noticing. He had her pinned to the floor, sitting on her, holding onto her ears and kissing her. Any other dog would have snapped, she just wagged away and kissed him back.
I've stayed in touch with the rescue. They have a huge Facebook "family" who help each other out. They've raised enough money to buy a kennels over there, so dogs can be taken out of the kill pounds and assessed properly before coming over. We have volunteers in the uk who have fostered dogs on the rare occurrence that they get returned. In the two years I've been involved, very few dogs haven't turned out to be super family dogs. I'm not saying it's easy, you have to be a certain type of dog owner, and prepared to ride the odd storm. They may take some work to settle into a household.
And you'd have to be pretty hard hearted to turn your back on them once you've seen what goes on over there. They're not really kill shelters, more like "leave to rot" shelters. The dogs are thrown into cages with mesh sides and corrugated roofs. In summer it's 35 degrees and full of flies, in winter it's -15 with deep snow. The ones on the outside edge cages have no protection. They have a pallet for a bed, no bedding. They are lucky if they get fed once a week, same for water, never cleaned out. Once in a while they feed them poison if they're getting too full, so they die slowly. Older dogs and puppies usually die anyway. We have some amazing local ladies that go in on Sundays and give them a load of feed and a bucket of water, that's the only day they allow them in. We now employ them at the kennels we bought. We are trying to work with local schools to educate locals about neutering and caring for dogs. We are trying to work with local government to start a neutering program. All the dogs that come over are neutered as well as having jabs, flea and worm treatments and basic health checks. I can't speak for other rescues, but the one I know about is genuine and good.
Picture of the savage beast...