“You don’t have a fenced in backyard.”
“Your current pets aren’t up to date on their vaccinations.”
“You aren’t willing to use a crate.”
“The pets in your home aren’t neutered or spayed.”
Does any of this sound familiar? These are a few of the reasons commonly given by shelters and rescues when turning down potential adopters.
The question is: Are they valid reasons?
Even more importantly: Is denying an adoption based on any of these criteria helping save the life of a homeless dog or cat?
Dr. Emily Weiss of the ASPCA has been loud and clear in how she feels about black-and-white requirements for pet adoption.
And her points are valid:
- When someone is denied the chance to adopt a dog at a particular shelter, they are more than likely to go elsewhere — including a puppy-mill-fed pet store.
- By refusing to adopt to someone, you’ve now completely closed the door on ever serving as a resource for that person — and you can toss any discussions about neutering and vaccinating their pets out the window.
If the bottom line of any shelter or rescue is to find homes for homeless animals, that also means dispensing with home inspections, phone calls to veterinarians, and even adoption fees.
Let’s face it, the quickest way to adopt a dog (or any animal), is to immediately let someone take the dog without asking questions, checking up on their living situation or the current care given to their pets, or taking money. Right?
Maybe it sounds irresponsible when it’s put this way, but we all know a dog or cat is killed in one of our country’s shelters every 11 seconds. So why create roadblocks when you can save a life instead?
The trend these days in adoptions is to have a conversation with potential adopters rather than carved-in-stone requirements. Guiding rather than deciding.
Is there risk involved when you get rid of strict adoption criteria? Sure. But isn’t there also risk involved in leaving an animal in a shelter where he can deteriorate physically, mentally and emotionally in a short period of time — often resulting in euthanasia?
And by the way, those strict adoption criteria that we’ve been using all these years haven’t exactly prevented our shelters from becoming massively overcrowded, have they.
It may sound from the way this is written that I totally support waiving the traditional adoption requirements.
But the truth is, I’m still on the fence about it.
Finding out if a potential adopter has neutered and vaccinated his pets, getting a referral from a vet, and doing a home inspection makes for a lot of hoops to jump through. Yet it feels reassuring that by getting the “right” answers to these questions, the odds are in favor the newly adopted pet is going to a good home.
But then I have to wonder: Am I looking for a good home … or am I actually looking for a perfect home?
In my defense, I’ll say that when you’ve been involved in a dog’s rescue, spent days, weeks and often months training him, and grown to love him like he’s your own, it’s very, very tough to let him to go anywhere you think might be less than perfect.
But if that’s the case, am I really doing everything I can to help find homes for homeless animals?
How strict do you think adoption criteria should be? Let us know in the comments section below.
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