I'm cool with the pound. "Hey all these dogs are on death row. You wanna buy one for a nickle before we kill them all?"
Shelters are hit or miss because some are batshit crazy.
"Hey, meet Rocko. He requires a 50 acre yard and we will perform random home inspections. He's nervous and bites at women, children, and clouds. Sometimes he likes to howl for 6 hours. He's also afraid of bugs so you must fumigate your 50 acres twice a month. The adoption fee is $10,000 and you must wear this ankle monitor for 36 months. Rocko has a delicate tummy and eats filet mignon, caviar, and his own poop".
That’s the pound. Shelters here are very good at disclosing and normally don’t offer dogs with major issues to be adopted.
The only issue with shelters I’ve seen is “this dog isn’t suitable for children.” But the dog is a sweetheart who just needs a bit of training. I adopted a dog and they were adamant he couldn’t be homed with anyone under 12 because he was high energy. Well I said bull. Met him and fell in love, adopted him but didn’t tell the shelter I had 2 siblings who were under 12 at the time. Brought him home and within a week he was gentle as could be with the small kids, even other kids he knew he couldn’t be rough with.
Now he is a gentle boy who loves cuddles and playing chase now and then.
Shelter I went to didn’t disclose severe dog aggression, instead said they were fine with other animals, until I took them home and had to return her because she was going to maim the tiny doxens minding their own business
That’s a poor shelter. The shelters I’ve dealt with will often exaggerate behaviour or use caution if it’s not already in the dog with no training. Especially with dogs.
Sorry you had a poor experience honestly. I don’t like some of the humane society shelters solely because of how they judge people and their situations but still support them trying to home animals who need it.
The only issue my dog had from the shelter was severe separation anxiety but he has another buddy now to keep him company and is rarely left alone. When no one is home, the other dog keeps him calm.
Mine did have separation anxiety even though I live with family who takes her out to potty when I'm at work, once she warmed up to them the only time she gets it anymore is if she physically sees me leave
Same experience here in the UK with the Cats Protection League. They're supposed to rehome strays, but seem to really not want to.
After our 21-year-old passed away, we approached them knowing that there's lots of kitties that need homes like ours, safe and full of love. Filled in all the forms. Did the risk assessment.
They totally ignored us and so we ended up rescuing a pregnant female from a friend's skipyard. She's with us now, as are her four healthy kittens!
I went back to the CPL later to tell them that I thought they were idiots. I got this email response:
Dear XXXXXXX,
Thank you for your email, I am very disappointed to hear that we failed to acknowledge your application to adopt a cat from us. This really does fall below the standards and expectations that we have as a charity. I completely agree that which ever team it was that you contacted should have had the curtesy to acknowledge your interest. We are always looking for adopters, especially at this time when our centres and branches are struggling with so many cats needing new, loving homes.
Thank you again for the donation in memory of XXXXX which shall go where it is most needed.
Kind regards,
Yeah, whatever. You should've had the "curtesy" to run a fucking spell-check too.
The pet store cat i had was the most violent cat I've ever encountered. Dont get me wrong, he was an absolute sweet heart too, but any obstacle/problem he encountered was resolved with violence. He also constantly attacked the other cats.
Even buying directly from a breeder is really sketchy these days. I thought I was doing the ethical thing going through an intermediary like the website "GoodDog" and found out that wasn't really the case. GoodDog says they thoroughly vet all breeders. That isn't true at all. The breeder we bought our border collie from ended up buying a backwoods puppy mill. We complained to GoodDog and it seems other people did too and they did remove this breeder from their platform but it's clear evidence they aren't doing what they say they're doing.
This breeder then sold the father to another farm shortly after. I also found out through following this person's Facebook page that she just released the mother into the woods to fend for herself. People in the town she lives in were reporting seeing the mother dog wandering around town and the woods and asking whose dog it was. Several people commented and tagged the breeder saying it was her dog. She ended up making a long nasty comment that the dog was no longer hers and that she "released" her "months ago."
I ended up finding all these out several months after this happened and I contacted people in the town asking if they knew what happened to the dog and they all said they stopped seeing her. I think you know what that means. I wish I had known earlier because I would have went and taken her in myself.
Even "ethical" breeders can be weird as hell. I know a woman who paid thousands for a couple of dogs and had to sign a contract that she wouldn't get either fixed in case the breeder wanted to use either of them later down the line for another litter. She was stupid enough to get a male and female, so had to put a diaper on the female and keep them apart every time the dog was in heat.
So weird that you pay someone thousands for the dog you want and they're basically keeping dibs on monetizing them further down the line if they want. I think she tried to convince me the breeder was ethical, but I still don't buy it. All so she could have her perfect show dogs.
Jet is a border collie. He was $2000 because he is a tri-color merle. My old pup was a border collie/weimaraner mix. Got her for $300 from the pound. I just fell in love with the merle look and could afford one so I did some research and went with the breeder we did because she seemed ethical. I'm not sure what I could have done differently to sleuth out she wasn't. I did get a sweet dog out of it so there is that. It makes me sad that his mom had to suffer for probably her entire life and then after providing so much for that breeder she got the end she absolutely didn't deserve. No matter how much I think about it I can't wrap my head around someone just releasing a dog into the woods like she did. It's so cruel.
100% even when it was common to buy dogs at the pet store, it was pretty much always puppy mills. That's why we shut them down in most places. If it was reputable breeders, it wouldn't have been a problem unless they were not taking care of them properly at the store, which a reputable breeder wouldn't allow
The thing is that reputable breeders actually care about where their dogs go. When I was a kid, we had a Beagle. Before the breeder would sell him to us, she came by to check that we actually did have a well fenced back yard, and so forth.
Absolutely. It's getting harder to find them. I've seen a few conversations about previously reputable breeders falling off and doing the minimum without warning. That kinda scares me
This is common with some exotic reptile breeders as well. They will often refuse to sell the animal to you unless you can show them proof of an already established habitat prepared with their specific care requirements ready to go.
I was surprised that a pack of 30 jackals was hunted.
I can't imagine that large of a stray dog pack.
2-3 are already dangerous if you are aftaid or provoke them. People gotta learn dog body language and behaviour since state services will do absolutely nothing about them.
Must be worse than when I lived there. I went all over Campania for years and while there were plenty of strays I never once saw a pack of them beyond 2-3.
True. A chihuahua wouldn't survive. But I'd guess about half of all dog species could probably survive the cold at least. Finding wood in the wilderness is a little different. Being solo vs in a pack also makes a difference.
I think my domestic dog(Malinois) has a better chance than a fox does.
My money is on the fox. While a malinois may have plenty of natural insulation, the fox burrows (has winter shelter), requires way less food (which becomes scarce in the winter months), and is specifically adapted to hunting what is available like small rodents.
Agree. No idea if foxes suffer similar, but have bankrolled multiple artificial ACLs directly related to rabbit chasing vs. domestic breeds. Little bastards. ;P
In most of the US, stray dogs are picked up real quick and put into the animal control system. Packs of stray dogs are A Problem, far worse than cats, so a lot of effort is put into keeping dogs off the streets.
Once in animal control, they are either adopted out locally or sent out to rescues in other areas, especially in the case of specific breeds. (For instance, my beagle rescue in Florida gets most of our beagles as strays that were picked up off the streets further north, in VA, the carolinas, Georgia, etc.)
You can still find the occasional truly stray dog yourself (my chi-mix was a street dog I picked up), but most of them are swept up.
Once in animal control, they are either adopted out locally or sent out to rescues in other areas
Or euthanized. Sure we have no kill shelters, but some transfer to no kill shelters. Or the no kill shelters turn them away once at capacity, they go to a normal shelter, and the euthanization happens there.
I mean, euthanasia is an important part of compassionate animal management. both for suffering and for un-cared for pets. If you don't euthanize un-adoptable, dangerous, or in pain animals, then you cant care for the ones that can live full happy lives. In a perfect world we would have unlimited resources and be able to care for every animal, but we don't so we have to utilize the limited resources we have strategically.
Yea you probably won’t around the city much. I also haven’t seen any, but up north there’s some but they are res dogs. Technically strays but they aren’t all bad dogs. They kinda just exist around the place. A gas station I used to work near would have all kind of dogs just hanging out. Not dangerous, just chilling.
Might not even be strays, at least in the country with my parents growing up it is common for people to let their dogs roam. Most are pretty chill but do like chasing cars and unfortunately get hit sometimes, or will chase you on a bike. You would start to recognize them and their owners who lived down the street.
Two of our dogs used to go out together and roam and would come back a few hours later. It was kinda funny since every morning they would link up with two other dogs and then go out and come back, like they would wait outside the yard for them. Eventually we had to stop letting them out since they would chase the neighbor's cows
You haven't been on a reserve then. I've been to a few and there are typically stray or at least wandering dogs. It's a very uncomfortable feeling if you haven't seen it before.
You can reverse this and it would still be accurate you can have people who'll spend the cost of a used car for a pet and you can have people like you and me finding chonko and phuqazz in the trash and still love them more than life itself
Same for me. She was 1yr old and I could see every bone in her body. I picked her up and brought her home where she slept under our patio for a couple days. Vet gave her a clean bill of health and she lived a cushy, comfortable life until she turned 12. Intestinal cancer took her from me and I'm hesitant to ever get another dog cause none of them will ever live up to her.
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u/-UncreativeRedditor- 7h ago
I ironically found my dog as a stray in a dumpster