Pro-pound! Push Puppies!
His name at the pound was Jughead, but we changed it to Django*. Jughead is actually a pretty good name for him though, 'cause he's plenty goofy. We adopted him two months ago; three months previous to that, we'd gone to CACC and adopted another wonderful little dog named Hildy**, who is just as adorable. I'd post a picture of her too, but I don't have a good one (a situation which I hope to remedy soon). They are both sweet, fun dogs who bring much love and joy to our lives (and provide hours of fascination and free entertainment as well).
We adopted Hildy and Django after our two previous dogs, our beloved Buster and Checkers, died within a few months of each other last year. Our first thought was to adopt the new dogs through a private, no-kill shelter, because we'd gotten Buster and Checkers from such a place when we were living in Brooklyn. So I researched some pet rescue organizations and got in touch with one.
Unfortunately, working with them turned out to a huge pain in the ass. We had to fill out a lengthy questionnaire asking us everything from our financial and job info to the histories of every dog we've ever owned to a list of personal references. And oh yeah, it included a number of essay questions asking us what we would do if our dog did X. They wanted a copy of our lease as well. I swear, you could probably adopt a newborn from China with less hassle.
But we completed the application and a person from the agency contacted us a few days later. Turned out there was a little wrinkle: we'd said on the application that we'd want to adopt on a trial basis at first, because we did have another dog (Checkers was still living) and our first priority was that the new dog get along with the old one. We were treated suspiciously because of that, which I found weird -- weren't we just showing a completely understandable and responsible level of care and concern for the welfare of the dog we already had?
Bravo, Kathy! The best dogs come from pounds.
Here is ours:
Comments
For a few years, before I had kids, I volunteered quite a bit in the pet adoption area. I have dealt with several no-kill shelters and my views on no-kill are somewhat counter-intuitive.
I have learned that there is really no such thing as a no-kill shelter. No-kills merely push more killing along to other shelters which do kill or worse, sell the animals for research. In toto, there are no fewer animals killed with the presence of no-kill shelters than without.
It goes like this: If there are x number of truly adoptable animals and there are x number of cages for them in the shelters of the world then anything more than x has to be euthanized or sold for research. Or, put another way, if you want to place an adoptable animal in a shelter and the no-kill is full then you end up placing it in a kill shelter.
The travesty is that no-kill shelters hasten the demise of otherwise adoptable animals. This is because no-kills keep their own cages full, longer than necessary, either by creating bureaucratic hurdles for adopters or filling cages with basket cases who may never be adopted. All the while there is a perfectly adoptable cat or dog sitting in a kill shelter with a 4 or 7 day deadline looming over them.
Basically, if you really want to save an animal go to a kill shelter.
Posted by: Jardinero1![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.sivacracy.net/nav-commenters.gif)
|
April 4, 2008 9:28 AM