Good Enough
The Problem
Last week, over at Slate, Emily Yoffe wrote No Pet For You, and article about why her most recent dog was bought from a breeder, and why a number of people she has talked to also bought from breeders. It has nothing to do with wanting a specific breed, wanting to meet the parents, health testing, or any of the other reasons we often hear for why people buy their dogs from breeders.
Ms. Yoffe’s family, and the people she talked to, had started their journey for a new pet by going to a shelter or a rescue. But due to the invasiveness of the process, or sometimes really silly and arbitrary rules, they either didn’t complete the shelter application or were turned down.
Lindsay over at That Mutt has written about pounds being too picky, and I’ve written about a private rescue that wouldn’t adopt to us (we go to dog parks and don’t have a fenced back yard). And while the evidence of this trend is all anecdotal, it appears to be growing, if it’s considered worthy of an article at a major online publication like Slate.
And here’s my problem with it- it’s the animals that are paying the price. For every dog that doesn’t go home with a family because the kids drew in the dirt with a stick while waiting to meet the dog, that’s one more dog still in rescue, one less dog who can get out of the kill shelter and in to a foster home.
Who Does “Perfect” Serve?
Last week, over at love and a six-foot leash, Aleksandra wrote about when we don’t see eye to eye with the people around us about animals. Working with Pits, they are used to people not understanding, and working slowly toward gaining acceptance. They’ve learned that we have to have that skill in reverse, too. Sometimes we are quick to judge, based solely on first impressions, the way something looks, but if we take time to step back, to talk to people, then situations can change, and we can be the ones to effect that change.
If our goal is to help the animals, then we need to put the animals first, not our ideals and preferences. Now, there are some dogs that should just not go to homes with small children (especially if the kids aren’t already dog savvy), but that doesn’t mean that all families with small children should be ruled out by rescue organizations.
It’s getting to the point that adopting a pet is almost as difficult as adopting a child- no background checks, but there are “home studies” in the form of home visits, and the clause that says the rescue can drop by unannounced at any time and remove the animal from your care if they don’t like what they see, gives them even more power than Child Protective Services.
It’s almost like the groups are trying to weed out the “casual” pet owner- the people who want a house pet to love and adore, who don’t mind if the dog pulls while on leash, and are happy if they can learn “sit” and “down”, but don’t mind so much if recall isn’t perfect.
I know in the pet blogosphere, we often rail against these owners- people whose dogs are roaming free at the regular park, who don’t have great recall, people who call out “don’t worry, he’s friendly”. I know these people can get on our nerves. But honestly, do they get on our nerves so much that we’re willing to condemn dogs to death in order to prevent these people from having a dog? Is an imperfect home really worse than being in a shelter?
It’s Not About Us
Maybe I’m biased because I am far from a perfect owner. Juenbug’s recall is nonexistent when there are blackberry brambles to be crawled through. Larry is a punk who doesn’t know the meaning of back down. (Though he’s learning to disengage.) We don’t have fenced yard. We go to dog parks all the time. Sometimes, a toddler comes to visit us. At one time, we had two dogs and were out of the house 12-16 hours a day. (That sucked for all of us, but it was the reason we had two dogs, and not just one.)
But please don’t tell me that Moree, Smokey, Junebug, or Larry would have been better off staying in the shelter than coming home with us. If the shelter we got Larry from had been as picky as some shelters, they never would have had the space to go down to LA and get Larry (and lots of other dogs). Smokey had been in the shelter longer than any other dog there when we adopted him (almost certainly because he was a Pit mix), and yet, he was the most “turn-key” (to borrow a phrase from the real estate market) of any of our dogs.
None of us are perfect. And most of us probably started out as “casual” pet owners, either as kids or even with our first pets as adults. By trying to force every casual owner to become our perfect adopter before we let them have a pet doesn’t help any of the dogs in shelters and rescues. Instead, these people take their love of dogs, and their money, and go to a breeder. That’s one adoption lost, right there, and how many more, when the next time they want a dog, they once again decide that the rescues have made it too difficult, or they talk to their friends about being dismissed out of hand, or invasive adoption processes, or write an article for a major national publication?
How many adoptions are we losing? How many dogs are we condemning to overcrowded shelters, to death, because we’re looking for perfection? Sometimes good really has to be good enough. Not for us, for the dogs. And aren’t they the reason we’re doing this to begin with?