Adopting Your Next Family Pet: My personal experience with dog adoption

When I graduated from college, I decided that it was time to get a dog. I had grown up with dogs in my family from age six onwards-first a Great Pyrenees, and then a Saint Bernard. As a product of this, I’ve become what you would call an “animal person” of the highest degree. Having a dog around the house makes me a happier person, as I imagine it does for many of the other animal-lovers out there.Both of the dogs my family had while I was growing up were purchased from run-of-the-mill pet stores. The Great Pyrenees (alarmingly) was from a mall, and the Saint Bernard from a local pet shop. Over the years, I had heard stories about puppy mills and animal abuse, over breeding and inbreeding, and I had developed serious doubts as to whether buying puppies from pet shops is an ethical consumer decision.

Of course the preferable option for getting a good dog is to buy from a reputable professional breeder. The drawbacks of this approach are that supply of puppies can at times be limited, as respectable breeders will not over breed their dogs, in addition to the cost, which can be astronomically high if you’re looking to get a pup with show-worthy bloodlines. Even average purebred puppies can run upwards of three or four hundred dollars. As a student fresh out of college, this route simply wasn’t an option for me because of monetary restrictions.

It was at this point that I began to look into pet adoption agencies. There are SPCAs across the country in both rural and urban areas in addition to smaller independent nonprofit organizations that foster, treat, and rehabilitate pets. On the internet, one of the most useful resources that I discovered was the website www.petfinder.org. You can search your local area, region, or the entire country for the type of pet you would like to adopt, with search options such as pet type, breed, size, and age. Most postings come with pictures and the background for each animal, and petfinder.org features animals from different shelters all around the country.

On this website, I discovered a Great Pyrenees in a county animal shelter that was scheduled to be euthanized in days. My next free afternoon, I rushed to the shelter, an hour away, to find with some relief that someone from PyrRescue had removed the dog from the shelter and that it would have a foster home. Rather than turn around and go back home, like any person with an ounce of sense would, I looked at the other dogs in the shelter, which was run largely by prison inmates. I was taken by a small, sweet-looking female terrier mix, which, as you might suspect, ended up coming home with me. The adoption fee was $45, and I signed a contract promising that I would have her spayed within the next six weeks. Having her spayed was not an entirely pleasant experience, as she was very sick when she came home with nausea and vomiting. Within days though, she recovered, and she has been a wonderful, affectionate pet.

Many people express hesitation about adoption because many dogs in shelters have been mistreated, abused, or have other serious behavioral problems. However, it has been my experience that with a discerning eye, you can tell if there are problems. This isn’t to say that if a dog has problems associated with having bad owners, you should not adopt it. Most problems of this sort can be worked out with the help of a good owner who can show patience, persistence and affection to the dog. However, more serious problems that should rightly give reason for pause might be aggression, particularly if you have a family with children.

Another way to circumvent the potential problems of dogs that have been in shelters and/or abandoned is to adopt a young dog or puppy. They tend to be more impressionable, and rebound better from the traumatic experiences associated with dogs that end up in shelters. I adopted a Golden Retriever-Great Pyrenees mix when he was about 8 weeks old, and I have had no problems with him whatever (barring the typical puppy housebreaking and chewing issues, of course!). His adoption fee was around $100, but this is because he was already neutered at the time I adopted him.

Another thing to consider is that a lot of dogs that end up in shelters aren’t abused, mistreated or neglected at all. I have seen innumerable dogs listed on petfinder.com whose owners had to give them up for various reasons: divorce, allergies, owner death, new babies in the family, moving to a foreign country, etc.

In light of my experiences with pet adoption, I would strongly encourage any person considering getting a dog or puppy to seriously consider adopting rather than buying from a store. There are hundreds of thousands of good pets out there in our country without homes. Why support the demand for animals bred for store sale? If you put in the time and energy to research, spend time with, and adopt a shelter animal, you’ll have a great companion, and quite possibly save a life in the process.

Additional Resources:

www.petfinder.org http://www.hsus.org/